Between Two Worlds
by Ryshe
Summary: After a routine mission goes disastrously wrong Naruto is given a new task; travel halfway across the world and attend the Beacon Huntsman Academy. Naruto soon finds his loyalty torn between two worlds; his old life and his new. With tensions rising and new enemies appearing, the bonds that he has made will be tested to their limits.
1. Prologue: Crimson Trailer

The sun was bright, the wind gentle and it was business as usual in the village of Hikomi; which for this tiny village not far from Hi no Kuni's southern coast meant boring and peaceful.

Nestled in a small valley and stretching along the banks of a slow river, this was a peaceful place. It was far divorced from the demons of the northern mountains, the bandits of the east, and the constant skirmishes of the western border. Life here was slow and safe, many of the inhabitants never having known true danger.

That would be soon to change. Death and despair had come to Hikomi, and it stalked impatiently at the edge of the forest just above the town. Unbeknown to the villagers, something lurked in the shadows of the trees. Shadowy, monstrous creatures that almost seemed a hybrid of man and wolf - their lean bodies the colour of coal and their eyes like burning embers - paced impatiently through the trees. These glowing red eyes were fixed on the village below, waiting for a signal to descend and begin their feast.

Scarcely a soul in the village took notice when a single, solitary howl cut through the peace and quiet of the day like a knife. By the time anybody noticed the army of monsters descending from the trees like a rolling wave of darkness, it was already too late.

* * *

Not far from Hikomi a small group of warriors raced through the trees, nimble bodies jumping from branch to branch at a pace faster than most humans could match running across open ground.

The group numbered a dozen, each one of them heavily armed and armoured. They were decked out with olive-green flak jackets and all manner of bladed weaponry, each one of them wearing a metal-plated headband with the symbol of a leaf etched proudly onto it. These were the ninja of Konoha, defenders of the realm of Hi no Kuni. Trained from a young age, they were the elite of the Hi no Kuni military; shadowy assassins, fierce warriors, trusted guardians. Today they fulfilled another role; hunters.

The group was led by a young man in his late teens, setting a relentless pace as he raced onward. He was dressed in loose-fitting black clothing and had a shock of windswept sun-blond hair, striking blue eyes and whisker-esque marks on each cheek decorating his face. Most of the group was spread loosely behind him but one woman, pink hair cut short into a neat bob and pale skin flushed from the fast pace they were keeping, kept pace in close formation with the blond.

Eventually the group reached a small stream and pulled to a halt for a minute, thirsty ninja drinking deeply from the water and refilling canteens. The blond leader remained crouched on a tree branch, watching the sky with a grim look on his face.

Normally being assigned to patrol the southernmost province was one of the best missions to draw. Peaceful lands, beautiful scenery and friendly locals made it essentially a paid vacation by the standards of most ninja. Things had changed recently though. The past few weeks there had been reports of monsters roaming the forests, strange midnight coloured beasts unlike anything ever seen before. Many of the superstitious among them considered the monsters a curse, brought with the strangers hailing from a foreign land that had arrived in Hi no Kuni several weeks prior. Whatever the cause, tales of monsters had turned to isolated travellers falling off the face of the world, and then with worrying swiftness that had escalated to attacks on villages and military columns being decimated by unknown foes.

And so the ninja had been sent in to investigate and restore order.

The blond was tense as he crouched on a branch and watched the others restocking. Something felt off about the forest here; it felt too quiet, as though all the wildlife in the area had been scared away. The silence sent a chill down his spine, and he couldn't help but worry for the village they were supposed to be spending the night at.

He was so preoccupied with staring off into the forest that he didn't notice the pink-haired girl approaching him until she spoke. "You alright, Naruto?" she asked quietly, resting a gently hand on his shoulder. He started at the contact, but turned slowly and gave her a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.

"I'm fine Sakura, just nerves." He said quietly, forcing a grin for the sake of his partner. He and Sakura had been living and fighting alongside each other ever since graduating from the academy almost five years ago and he didn't think for a minute he had managed to fool her with the fake smile. She knew him well enough not to comment though, just keeping her hand on his shoulder as a comforting presence until they were ready to move again.

Soon enough the ninja were resupplied and moving again, moving through the trees even quicker than before. Naruto's gut feeling soon proved itself to be more than just a hunch when dark shapes began to emerge from the trees around them; shadowy figures running along the ground faster than any human could. "Naruto…" Sakura called out in warning, the group tightening its formation.

"I see them. Make for the village!" He shouted back, speeding up even more. They weren't far away now, one final push through the trees would see them to the village safely. A cacophony of howls and snarls came from the creatures below them but Naruto forced himself not to look down, focusing on the branches ahead. The various teams of ninja in the area had been using one of the local villages as their base of operations, and reinforcements should be close by. Hikomi would either be their salvation, or in desperate need of their aid.

Naruto's heart dropped as they broke through the worst of the forest and Hikomi finally came into view. Even from a distance he could see corpses littering the streets of the village, a thin circle of soldiers trying to hold back a wave of snarling darkness as the surviving villagers cowered behind them. Of the other ninja teams, there was no trace, and the regular soldiers would be hard pressed to fight an enemy like this without chakra. Naruto raised one hand and flashed several hand-signals in Konoha's specialised sign language, and his team began to spread out into a looser formation. In one silent rush, the ninja threw themselves into the battle.

Around him the air erupted as his fellow ninja used their own chakra, the air burning as all manner of lightning bolts and fireballs flew towards the monsters. Naruto focused his chakra into his legs and shot ahead. Clearing dozens of meters with each jump now, he sailed over the beasts and landed heavily on a roof near the survivors.

Naruto's eyes widened as he caught sight of something strange. Most of the creatures were pure black, looking like the typical myth of a werewolf, but one amongst them was different. It stood almost as tall again as the other wolves and its face was covered in a white, bone-like mask. Spikes of the same material pierced through its body in several places on its arms and shoulders, which it used to deftly deflect a thrusting spear before disembowelling the attacking soldier with a quick swipe of its claws.

Naruto's eyes narrowed as he watched it. It had the air of a leader about it, snarling commands into the air and holding back. While the smaller wolves raced to their deaths mindlessly this one moved with purpose, often literally letting its smaller cousins weigh down soldier's spears down with their bodies before moving to attack the burdened humans.

Signalling to his backup, Naruto took a deep breath and brought his free hand up. His fingers blurred as he flicked them through several hand-signs and pulled on his chakra. When he let his breath go it was to spit three crescent shaped blades of compressed air that flew towards the creatures with a sharp whistle. Two of them hit true and two of the smaller beasts were split straight down the middle, but the larger wolf saw it coming and darted backwards.

He'd bought the soldiers a bit of breathing time at least. Naruto gave a feral grin and flashed through a few more hand-signs, and with a pop and a cloud of smoke one Naruto suddenly became a dozen, the small rooftop suddenly filled with blond-haired ninja. As one, Naruto and his clones yelled a battle cry and jumped down to either side of the soldiers. The creatures surged forwards as a wave and the ninja sprung to meet them.

The beasts were ferocious and numerous, but they were mindless. Naruto began to charge a rasengan as he fell into the fight and the first wolf he encountered almost ran straight into it, its head disintegrating in a spray of gore as the powerful jutsu discharged. There were just too many of them though. Naruto quickly charged another rasengan, but in the time it took him to thrust the jutsu into the chest of one wolf, two more had come from him at the time. One opened a thin scratch along his arm with its claws and the other would have caught him in its jaws if Sakura hadn't come from the side, crushing its skull with an inhumanly strong punch.

Gritting his teeth in frustration, Naruto reached to the small of his back and pulled out the straight-bladed wakizashi that had been sheathed there, a slightly longer version of the standard chūnin tantō. He quickly pushed a flood of chakra down the weapon, and Fūinjutsu seals etched into the blade began to glow a bright, pure white as his chakra formed a wind natured aura. The chakra enhanced blade made quick work of the wolves, cleaving through flesh and bone as easy as paper. Naruto and Sakura pushed forwards, fighting around one another like a pair of dancers. He sliced one across the neck, caught a claw on his bracer and whirled to stab a third through the chest while he held that attacker back. Sakura quickly darted in to finish it off with a pair of twin kunai, and then ducked as Naruto spat out a globule of blade-laden wind to shred the wolf that had come up behind her.

Unnaturally thick and dark blood soon began soaking the street as the ninja made short work of the swarm, their bodies falling to the side and beginning to dissolve into the air. Emboldened by the sight of ninja, the regular soldiers yelled encouragingly and did what they could, fighting from a distance with their spears. With the arrival of the ninja, all that the wolves were really managing to accomplish now was tire the humans out.

Naruto realised too late that that was exactly what they were trying to do.

The big wolf struck suddenly. One moment Naruto was carving through yet more fodder, the next he just managed to block a pair of razor sharp claws that nearly gouged out his eyes. The larger beast had struck quickly and without warning, pushing Naruto back onto the defensive. He blocked several more blows before finally making one of his own, but the desperate swing at the beast's neck was caught and trapped in its claws.

Naruto gritted his teeth and strained as he tried to keep control of his sword. Even with chakra flooding and strengthening his muscles the beast was hellishly strong and he felt himself being pushed back, those claws inching closer and closer to his face. It was a bad situation, but Naruto had some tricks to pull out of his sleeves yet. There was a reason that he was leading this group despite being one of the youngest on it; he was going to show this beast the difference between a normal human and a jinchūriki.

Letting his mind wander for an instant Naruto looked deep inside himself, finding the point within his own mind where he had forged a tight mental lock and loosening it for just a moment. An alien presence pushed through the weakness; a fierce, uncontrollable anger emanating from it and trying to infect his thoughts. With it came a rush of energy, hot and potent in his veins.

It was this energy Naruto focused upon, channelling it through his hands and into his sword. For a brief moment his eyes flashed crimson, the colour quickly spreading to the glow around his sword. The seals etched into Naruto's sword seemed to hum with energy and the beast's claws suddenly shattered as Naruto's blade cut straight through them. The wolf flinched back and howled but Naruto followed it forwards, a second blow leaving a faint red trail as it carved straight through the bone plate protecting the big wolf's head.

The beast fell to the ground and Naruto jumped backwards towards the soldiers, calling out a warning to the others. He cut the stream of chakra to his sword and dropped into a crouch, panting. Around him he could hear the sounds of combat; the ring of metal on metal, faint explosions as supernatural jutsu flew back and forth, cries of pain. He tried to push the sounds away as much as he could and calm himself, push the presence still pushing at his mind back behind its mental prison.

Loosing the Kyuubi, the ancient demon sealed within his body, was taxing at the best of times, and with the howls and snarls of the wolves sapping at his concentration getting it back under control was difficult. The power he gained when he used it had saved his life multiple times in the past, but he didn't need it whispering bloodthirsty nothings into his ear while he was trying to fight. They were in the centre of the village here, surrounded by regular soldiers and trapped civilians; this was no place for a rampage.

Naruto's efforts to regain control were cut short when he heard a cry of pain from Sakura. He quickly looked up and his eyes widened in shock as he saw her grappling with yet another of the spike-clad wolves.

It wasn't just one more either; the horde of lesser monsters was almost entirely slaughtered now and Naruto could see almost twenty of the larger wolves, moving purposefully as they began to engage the encircled ninja. He gulped in fear as he saw Sakura's situation mirrored all around him. Unlike their smaller cousins these wolves were capable of fighting a ninja one on one, and they had the advantage of numbers.

The regular soldiers stood no chance and fell back in terror, the beasts breaking spears and tearing through lacquered armour like paper. Even the steel reinforced kevlar worn by the ninja provided little protection from the fearsome spikes and claws.

With an enraged roar Naruto rushed forwards and charged the wolf that was pinning Sakura, pushing it off her and cleaving through it with his wakizashi as the chakra glow reignited. He felt the presence in the back of his mind pulse and surge into his consciousness, but had no time to resist when he was immediately charged by another wolf.

Even using the demon's power wasn't enough to hold back the tide. The Kyuubi enhanced blade sliced straight through the beasts' bone-armour but there was too many of them, and they were too fast. One fell beneath his blade but another was there to rake claws across his stomach. He turned to face that one and teeth latched onto his shoulder from behind, the two working together to pull him to the ground. He roared and a shock-wave of crimson energy threw them back, fur smoldering and skin blistering from the foul chakra's touch.

Foreign memories began to race through Naruto's mind as his clones fell, the nimble beasts getting past their defences and using the shadow clone's fragility to quickly carve through them.

The wave of memories disorientated him and let another wolf get in close to strike at him, only just being rebuked by a quick slice. He made another cross-seal and summoned another dozen clones, but they fell as quickly as the others had and did little more than waste what chakra he had left.

The wolves zeroed in on him as a threat, and soon the throng surrounding him was so thick he could barely see the others. For every wolf he brought down two more appeared, slashing and biting at him. The wounds sizzled and closed back up as quickly as they were made but such a thing wasn't free, even Naruto's unnaturally large pool of chakra was quickly drained by regeneration, and soon he could barely stand. The pack circled around him, closing in for the kill.

Naruto couldn't react to the charge quickly enough when it came and was once again knocked to the ground. He felt teeth graze his neck and reacted instinctively, unleashing another shockwave of red that vaporised the wolf holding onto him. The presence of the Kyuubi in his mind was no longer gently probing him now; it felt more like a workman pounding away at his brain with a hammer.

Something instinctive snapped within him and he lunged forwards angrily. Teeth became fangs and fingers lengthened into claws as more and more of the beast's energy flooded through his body, soaking out through his skin and hanging about him in a red shroud. His sword lay forgotten on the ground as Naruto snarled and swiped at the wolves with his bare hands, red shrouded claws cutting through them as smoothly as any blade. For a time he fought as a berserker, showing no care for his own body as he howled wildly and tore through as many of the wolves as he could. Someone was calling his name but the sound was fuzzy, muted. All he could hear was his own breathing and the ecstatic screams of the demon in his head as he drew blood.

It wasn't enough. No matter how quickly he killed them there were just too many of them. All around him his team - men and woman he had fought and laughed and bled with for months - were falling; torn to shreds by the beasts that swarmed them.

One, two, three of the wolves caught him in a synchronised lunge, two biting into each of his arms while the third took out his legs. The Kyuubi's power failed him and Naruto fell to the ground, unable to even struggle as the weight of the beasts crushed him against the floor. Dragging his head weakly to the side he caught a flash of pink as Sakura was dragged down herself, and then a pair of claws flashed before his eyes and everything went black.

* * *

The black abruptly turned to white.

That was the first thing he was aware of, pure bright white stabbing needles into his brain.

After a few painful seconds the scene resolved itself into something he could actually make sense of. Plain white ceiling panels, bright strip-lights; the hospital. Naruto wondered how long he had been unconscious as feeling began to return to his body; it wasn't pleasant. His entire body ached down to the bone, and his mouth felt as dry as a desert. He tried to think back - figure out what had happened - but his memories were blurry, slipping away like sand through his fingers.

"You're awake."

Naruto started as he heard someone speaking from the foot of his bed. He craned his head to see a figure rising from a chair at the foot of his bed. Mouth set in a grim line, Tsunade Senju - Hokage, supreme commander of the village and the closest thing Naruto had to a mother-figure - rose to her feet. There was a long moment of silence as Tsunade stepped forwards and gingerly laid a hand atop one of Naruto's, staring at him quietly with a look in her eyes that made his stomach drop in dread.

"The others?" He croaked, his voice pleading.

A heavy sigh was his answer. "You were the only survivor. By the time reinforcements arrived everyone else…"

Naruto fell limply back against the pillow, closing his eyes. Unbidden memories flashed before his eyes, scattered recollections of the fight. Of his comrades, his friends, dying. He let out a low moan. "They- I-"

Tsunade's hand tightened around his own. "It wasn't your fault." She said firmly, her tone allowing no argument. She kept held of his hand a few moments more before sighing again and letting go.

He heard her rustling with something and opened his eyes again just in time to see her hold a familiar object out towards him. A mission scroll? He thought in confusion, stopping in his protest when she gave him a helpless look. He would have thought he would at least be given some time to… recover. "The council want you to leave as soon as you're fit." She said, helpless frustration filling her voice.

He winced. Failure wasn't looked upon kindly in ninja society and any way you looked at it, he had messed up badly. If the entire advisory council was against him there wasn't much even Tsunade could do to help him. He read the scroll in horrified silence, his eyes somehow growing even duller as he took in the words. "You're sending me away? You're sending me there?" he finally asked in a hoarse voice. The loss of his team, and now this; it was almost too much to process.

The Hokage paused halfway through saying something, glanced at him and then said simply, "Yes." Before sighing and taking a seat again. "People are angry Naruto. A team of promising young ninja just got wiped out under your command. I need to appease them somehow and-" She paused and gave him a steely look. "Besides, your mission is more than what is just on the scroll. These creatures only started appearing after those 'explorers' found us Naruto. We're ninja, we don't believe in coincidences, however much that windbag ambassador of theirs splutters and denies. I don't know what's going on, but I intend to find out."

She started to pace about the room, the way her hands were clasped tightly behind her back revealing her anger. "Twelve villages destroyed, thousands of soldiers and civilians dead, along with dozens of ninja. In two weeks. These 'Grimm' creatures are nothing like we've ever seen before. You will go to Vale and you will attend this school, but you will also gather any information on the Grimm you can. You'll find out if these huntsmen have anything to do with the Grimm appearing in our lands and if they do…" The silence as she trailed off was more sinister than anything she could have actually said. A smart ninja avoided violence unless the situation called for it, but when they were stirred to action mercy was not a word on their tongues.

Naruto was still silent. The sense of duty and revenge within him urged him that this was the right path but he felt oddly scared. Konoha was his home, he didn't want to leave it. Tsunade noticed and her face, beginning to flush from anger, softened. "This is for the best Naruto." She said gently, "You will be out of sight and safe from the council, and I get someone I trust in the best position I can get to investigate this." Feeling the fatigue catching up to him again Naruto nodded his head in acceptance - as though he actually had a choice - and then laid down again weakly.

There was a pregnant pause, before Tsunade gave him a sad look and moved to leave. "I'll go make the preparations. Good luck Naruto, be safe."

"Yeah, right." He muttered at the closing door.

Much as he wanted to, when Naruto tried to lay back and go to sleep he found himself unable to rest; the faces of his team flashing before his closed eyes. Instead he reached out gingerly and took up the scroll that Tsunade had handed him away, unrolling the piece of paper and beginning to read it over again. If it was going to be his home for the next four years, he might as well read up about this Beacon Academy.

* * *

**A/N: **

**Howdy, welcome to Between Two Worlds! **

**This is my take on a RWBY/Naruto crossover. I've meshed the two worlds together and rewritten some of the Naruto world's history (more on that below) to create the background for this. As well as action, mystery and a bit of romance later on, this story is based around looking at how Naruto, trained to be loyal to Konoha from birth, will deal with his loyalties being pulled in opposite directions as he interacts with both worlds.**

**Got a couple of points to discuss before we get into things**

**Universe wise, this version of Naruto follows canon up until the start of the timeskip. From there, things diverge. The events around the akatsuki never quite got going in this universe, Otogakure plays a bigger part in the events following Naruto's return, and such. I'm not going to go into too much detail because while some of the changes are motivated by making it so that we don't go into this story with all the Naruto villains dead, there is backstory here that's going to come out as this story progresses. The fusing of the Naruto an RWBY worlds has created several changes both big and small (coughthemoonisexplodedcough) that have had their effects on the Naruto canon.**

**Secondly, the power levels. This is a change that a couple people have complained about, so I thought it'd be worth setting it out here and now: the ninja in this story are less powerful than their canon counterparts. That, and the Grimm are more powerful than their RWBY canon selves. **

**In this story, Naruto is ranked a chūnin and his power reflects that. He's a bit differently balanced from canon, less brute strength and more variety to his abilities, because to be frank Naruto at 17, at canon levels of power, would just be far too overpowered for the RWBY universe. I'm using my own interpretation of things and regular Naruto is somewhat weaker but trickier. The Kyuubi's power gives him the sort of brute strength we see in canon, but at the cost of control. **

**There are various reasons for this. Balancing Naruto against the enemies he will face, making the other students not completely outclassed combat-wise, giving Naruto some room to grow across the story despite his age, etc. In the end, I'm just enjoying writing a slightly smarter Naruto and getting to play around with the potential abilities of ninja that I would enjoy writing him in canon; spamming clones and smashing varying forms of rasengan into things don't make for the most varied fight scenes.**

**Anyway! If Naruto and co being weaker than you're used to doesn't put you off, or if you're willing to keep going despite it doing so, then welcome to the story! I hope that you enjoy it. Glossary:**

**Hi no Kuni: lit. Land of Fire; the country that Naruto comes from, ruled by the fire Daiymo**

**Konoha/Konohagakure: lit. Village Hidden in the Leaves; a village that houses the ninja of Hi no Kuni. Lead by the Hokage (Fire Shadow).**


	2. Chapter 1: A New Beginning

**Updated 02/05/16: No major changes, some small changes in wording and corrections to grammar/spelling I missed the first time around.**

* * *

Vale was quite possibly one of the most impressive cities that Naruto had ever seen, and a career as a ninja had given him cause to travel more than most in his world.

From his position slumped against one of the grand viewing windows that adorned the airship he was travelling on, Naruto had an unrivalled view of the city. Wide set docks manned by ships larger than any he had ever seen morphed into charming architecture and winding streets, which themselves quickly grew into dizzyingly tall skyscrapers that towered over the land below. Being told about all the grand cities and advanced technology that the kingdoms of Remnant had was one thing, but actually seeing it in action like this was another thing entirely.

It was a pity that the young ninja wasn't in more of a mood to enjoy the scenery. The three week journey crossing the great sea that separated their two continents hadn't done much to improve Naruto's mood after the disaster of a mission that had landed him here. If anything, being stuck on-board an airship with no company aside from language books and unfailingly distant sailors had just given Naruto's bad mood a chance to ferment.

Regret. Guilt. Fear. Ninja were conditioned to ruthlessly repress emotions like these, but Naruto had never picked up well on that part of the training. His memories of the later stages of the battle were still fragmented and clouded by the demonic chakra he had used, but he remembered enough for his dreams to be haunted by the faces of those he had failed to protect.

Things had improved somewhat as the airship slowly made its way north. Students had been collected piecemeal from across the different islands and continents that made up Remnant, and the airship had slowly begun to fill with noise and life. Naruto had still kept to himself for the most part, but the thrum of life and noise helped to distract him when the thoughts rattling around inside his head got particularly loud. Of course, people came with their own problems.

In the month between the battle of Hikomi and him leaving Hi no Kuni things had deteriorated rapidly. The Grimm had spread like wildfire throughout the southern reaches of Hi no Kuni and Konoha had been forced to mobilise a force of ninja the likes of which hadn't been seen since the last Great Ninja War in order to contain them. As more and more people died, the group of Hi no Kuni citizenry blaming the explorers from Vale had grown and grown.

Which - privately considering his current company - Naruto thought made sense. Grimm had never been seen before on their entire continent and then shortly after explorers from a continent infested with the things arrive on their southern coast, that section of Hi no Kuni was crawling with them.

Theories ranged from anything to the explorers carelessly carrying the Grimm with them by accident to grand conspiracies against their country and pressure had been put on Tsunade to react until eventually she had no choice. The ninja had moved to expel the foreigners from the country; trading posts and scouting parties either being driven back to their airships or slaughtered outright. Small pockets had resisted, more airships had arrived from the kingdom and the entire thing had nearly blown up into an full scale war before both sides had eventually been talked down. The conflict had been brief, but more than bloody enough to stir up some bad blood on both sides.

Naruto's acceptance into Beacon had been one among a series of small gestures between the two towards peace, but the sight of the Hitai-ate on his forehead still provoked discomfort and dislike amongst many who saw him. Much of the conflict had been televised by Vale news teams in the country and most of their recordings didn't exactly paint ninja like him in a positive light.

If he was honest with himself though, he hadn't exactly been trying to defuse things from his end either. A lot more people from his country had died because of the Grimm than had been hurt on Vale's behalf while they were being driven out, and he had felt the effect of many of those deaths personally. For the moment Naruto held as much bitterness and suspicion for many of the people around him as they did for him. For all he and the rest of Konoha knew these huntsmen could be enemies. He was a student of Beacon now, yes, but he was still very much a ninja of Konoha, and infiltrating enemy territory was far from an unusual task.

The whole thing had drawn Naruto's mind away from self-hatred, but he was still left in a terrible mood. Knowing why the other students disliked him didn't make it any less frustrating. It almost felt like he was a child in Konoha again, scorned and hated once again for something he had no control over.

So for the most part he stuck to the windows and quietly watched the scenery float by, letting the murmurs fade into the background noise of the crowded craft. Unfortunately there was little of note outside the windows now as the craft flew through a thick cloud bank, and boredom forced Naruto away from his perch by the window.

It was easy enough to lose himself in the crowded deck, moving through the crowd quickly enough that nobody really noticed who he was. Naruto's attention was torn between dozens of amazing sights as he took in all the weird and wonderful weapons borne by the various students; everything from simple swords and shields to over-sized death dealing machines that Naruto couldn't even begin to name, adorned with entirely too many spikes.

Naruto's attention was suddenly snatched from a particularly interesting looking sword-bow by a loud shout. "Oh, but I'm so proud of you!"

His eyes were drawn first to the striking figure of a voluptuous girl, dressed in a leather jacket and half-skirt worn over short-shorts and a crop top. The girl's curvy figure and toned, bare midriff would have drawn attention enough by themselves but her long, wild mane of blonde hair and energetic nature made her stick out like a beacon amongst the crowd.

The blonde was currently crushing a smaller girl in an affectionate death-hug, crooning happily. Aside from skin tone the two looked almost very different, only the blonde's crooning revealing that they were actually siblings. The smaller girl wore a red-trimmed black dress and, of all things, a long, bright red cloak. With bright silver eyes and shorter hair - darker coloured and fading into red towards the ends - framing a round face, this second girl leaned more towards cuteness than the confident beauty of the other girl. She was also a lot shorter; Yellow was roughly Naruto's height while Red was short enough that her feet were held off the ground by the hug, flailing about comically as she kicked at the blonde girl's shins.

Despite his mood, Naruto couldn't help a faint grin of amusement at the sight of the two; they reminded him somewhat of some of the more rambunctious ninja during their downtime. He kept half an eye on them as he moved about the cabin, picking up their names - Yang for the curvy blonde and Ruby for the adorable redhead - before an excited murmur spread through the cabin like a wave and stole his attention.

The airship had just broken through the cloud bank and straight into view of Beacon. Naruto's eyes widened as he took in the school; Vale had been impressive but Beacon was like something out of a fairy-tale. Perched atop sharp cliffs lay a sprawling complex of ornate buildings and elegant spires. The entire complex was towered over by the largest clock-tower Naruto had ever seen, a bright light shining out from the clock-face.

This was Beacon Academy, the institution that took in the most skilled young fighters Remnant had to offer and turned them into deadly huntsmen and huntresses. This was to be Naruto's home for the next four years.

* * *

Ruby Rose was not having the glorious first day at Beacon that she had been dreaming about.

It had started great! She and Yang were going to Beacon together and it was going to be awesome and they were gonna be the best team ever. And then Yang had ditched her, and then she tripped over some crabby girl's luggage and then she exploded. And of course it was somehow her fault that the crabby girl had been waving her dust around and made Ruby sneeze into a cloud of the explosive powder.

All in all, today wasn't going great, and as Ruby lay shell-shocked and sprawled on the ground watching the white-dressed girl - princess, heiress, _whatever_ she was - storm away she couldn't help but let out a demoralised sigh. "Welcome to Beacon," she muttered to herself, closing her eyes and trying to forget what had just happened.

Unfortunately fate didn't seem to be done with her yet and she was quickly disturbed by the sound of approaching footsteps and the horrifying realisation they brought with them. _Oh god, how many people just saw me explode myself!? Way to make a good first impression Ruby._

Slowly Ruby forced herself to open her eyes and face the music, revealing an unfamiliar figure. Standing over her was an exotic looking boy standing about as tall as Yang, shaggy blond hair framing a tanned face. He was dressed somewhat oddly in a black and orange jumpsuit, jacket worn open over a white t-shirt. A splash of colour drew her attention down to where he had a a bright orange scarf tied around his waist, one end falling down a few inches from his left hip where it was held together by some sort of pin in the shape of a dark red spiral. What really set him apart from many of the other students was the odd headband he wore; a length of black fabric wrapped under his fringe with a plate of dull-grey metal, a symbol that looked like a leaf etched neatly onto it. Ruby - who typically wasn't particularly up to date with news that wasn't advancements in weapons technology - didn't recognise the symbol, but it looked interesting.

He wasn't looking at her yet, instead sending a disgruntled look at the white-clad girl's back and muttering something about a stick that Ruby couldn't quite hear, but when he noticed Ruby's eyes on him he shifted his attention to her. He grinned widely at her, and while it didn't quite reach his eyes there was still a spark of concern there.

"You alright?" the boy asked, holding a hand down to pull her back up to her feet.

"Yeah I-I'm fine. Just a bit… frazzled. Heh." Ruby replied nervously, brushing some ash from her sleeve. The explosion had been a small one by dust standards and her aura had absorbed almost all of the blast.

She paused awkwardly for a moment as the boy raised an eyebrow at her, rocking back on her feet and silently cursing Yang for abandoning her with so many strangers. "Uh, so, my name's Ruby by the way," she continued, taking a few quick steps to fall into place alongside the boy as he started to slowly walk away towards the school.

"Naruto," the boy offered back with a distant voice, his attention seemingly taken up by the building ahead more than her now that he knew she was alright.

Ruby fidgeted as the silence between them grew awkward. Unable to thick of anything else to do she pulled Crescent Rose from her back, letting the crimson coloured scythe expand. When fully unfolded Crescent Rose was longer than Ruby was tall and the thickness of the shaft where the sniper-rifle was built into it made for an intimidating looking weapon. Or at least she liked to think so.

"Sooo, I got this thing," she said casually, letting the tip of the scythe fall to the ground with a thud. Naruto started and looked at the weapon with wide eyes, his shock making Ruby grin. _Heh, that got his attention._

"I- wow. What is that?" he asked in a faintly shell-shocked voice, eyeing the massive weapon with wary eyes.

Ruby hummed proudly and shifted the scythe so that she was cradling it, her smile wide and much more confident now. "She's a High-Calibre Sniper Scythe," she informed him proudly, holding Crescent Rose as though it was a child rather than a weapon. "I call her Crescent Rose."

"Huh, that's certainly something. Never seen a weapon like that before," he commented, looking the scythe over. "Isn't it heavy for a little thing like you though?"

Ruby gave a happy giggle at what she took as praise, sticking her tongue out at the crack about her size. "Heh. I'm kind of a dork when it comes to weapons, I guess I did go a bit overboard designing her. She's lighter than she looks though; I used a lightweight dust-steel alloy." She shifted her grip so she was holding the weapon single handed and jiggled it to demonstrate. Naruto's face looked suitably impressed and Ruby's smile somehow grew ever brighter. "So, what've you got?"

After a moment of hesitation Naruto dropped a hand around to his lower back and pulled free a short sword, though not one like Ruby had seen before. The blade was thin and about the length of his forearm, with a subtle curve and a single sharp edge that ended in a dangerous looking point. The blade and hilt both were coloured a dusky grey, and Ruby could just make out some indecipherable characters etched into the metal.

"Oooohh, neat," she commented, admiring the simple but well-made blade. "What does it do? Fire? Explosions?!"

"It cuts things, really well," Naruto deadpanned. When Ruby pouted in disappointment he have her a small grin and gripped the blade tighter, seeming to concentrate for a second before the blade suddenly started to glow a bright blue-white. The etchings from before were more visible now, a pure white against the overall mixed colour, but Ruby couldn't make any sense of the foreign characters. Naruto quickly darted out with his free hand and plucked a hair from Ruby's head; eliciting a small noise of protest.

"You're lucky I'm not my sister," Ruby muttered darkly, rubbing her head and watching as Naruto let the hair drift down towards the blade. Her expression quickly shifted from annoyance to awe as the gently drifting hair sliced itself neatly in two against the glowing blade. "Cool!" she commented as Naruto let the glow fade and sheathed the wakizashi again.

Ruby let out an excited hum and gained a few inches ahead of Naruto as her thoughts dropped into excitement for a moment. Cranky girls, treacherous sisters and explosions aside, Beacon was awesome! There were so many interesting people and so many cool weapons! Out of the corner of her eye she could see Naruto staring at her with an oddly contemplative look, his head cocked to the side like a curious dog - _ooh! Maybe he's a secret faunus, that'd be awesome!_

"So, why are you here?" The question took Ruby off guard, but she only had time to give Naruto a confused glance before he quickly expanded "I meant; Beacon trains huntsmen and huntresses, yeah? Why do you want to be a huntress?" Naruto's voice was matter-of-fact, as though he were just making casual conversation. His eyes though, were sharp and focused, probing. Ruby had the odd feeling that the question had more meaning than he was actually letting on.

Huh, that was an odd question. "Well, I want to help people," she said simply. "When I was younger my sister would read me stories about heroes and monsters and I always wanted to be like the heroes in those tales. Helping people and making the world a better place, y'know?"

She flushed slightly and looked back at Naruto out of the corner of her eye, wondering it that bit about the stories was an admission too far. She was somewhat surprised to find the first true smile she had actually seen from the boy spread across his face, an approving look in his eyes. Emboldened she turned the question back on him. "What about you?"

Naruto seemed to hesitate an unusually long time before he answered her back, the smile dropping off his face. "Nothing as noble as you," he began casually, making her smile brightly, "I had a… lonely childhood, sometimes it felt like the rest of my village didn't even see me. I wanted people to acknowledge me and becoming a warrior seemed the best way to do that." Ruby gave him a sympathetic look but the words had been matter-of-fact; an old wound that had healed over.

"I've heard worse reasons for becoming a huntsman," she commented, giving him a reassuring pat on the arm. Naruto's face flickered to surprise before he gave her a grateful smile and the two fell into silence again, though it was more comfortable and companionable now. Ruby took the opportunity to look around where they had been walking and noticed with a sinking feeling how few other students there were around them. "Uhh, do you know where we're going?" she asked.

"Nope, I was following you."

"Damn"

* * *

By the time they had found their way to the hall where all the first year students were supposed to be gathering, Ruby and Naruto had fallen into a pattern of light conversation. Naruto - who Ruby had guessed by now was foreign to Vale - seemed more interested in hearing about the kingdom and life there than offering up anything about himself.

For her part Ruby was happy to oblige him, cheerily supplying tales of her childhood in Patch and visits to the city itself. She had been particularly animated when telling him about how she had stopped a robbery and gotten accepted into Beacon two years early as a result, punctuating the story with some wild arm waving that looked vaguely like some form of martial arts. If you squinted. And were drunk.

"Ruby, sis!"

The call cut through their conversation mid-sentence as they wandered into the back of the crowded hall and Ruby turned happily to see the welcome sight of Yang pushing her way through the throng of students, her bright hair easy to pick out amongst the crowd. Less welcome was the look on her face; Yang's eyes had twitched to Naruto's forehead as they arrived and her expression soured slightly as she started making her way over towards them. Naruto frowned as he saw her; after talking to Ruby for so long he had almost forgotten that most of the people here didn't like him just for his affiliation.

"And that's my cue to leave. Later Ruby," Naruto muttered from besides her. With a wave and a pat on the shoulder he quickly disappeared into the crowd, leaving Ruby to face her sister.

* * *

While the assembled students talked amongst themselves two figures took to the stage. A severe looking blonde woman with a tattered cape on her back and a riding crop tucked under her arm lurked behind a tall, thin man with floppy grey hair and a black suit. Professors Ozpin and Gylnda Goodwitch were instantly recognisable from the dossier Naruto had been given beforehand, and he watched with interest as Ozpin coughed lightly into the microphone.

"I'll keep this brief. You have travelled here today in search of knowledge, to hone your craft and acquire new skills, and when you have finished you plan to dedicate your life to the protection of the people," he began, his voice surprisingly monotone for someone addressing such a large crowd.

"But I look amongst you, and all I see is wasted energy; in need of purpose, direction." A wave of disgruntled muttering swept through the assembled students at that last part and Ozpin paused for a moment to cast a sharp gaze around the room. "You assume knowledge will free you of this, but your time at this school will prove that knowledge can only carry you so far. It is up to you to take the first step." He gave the room one last, slow look before abruptly turning to walk away.

"Huh, that was something." Naruto muttered to himself, leaning against a wall at the far edge of the room. Life in Konoha had gotten him used to speeches to a crowd this size being more patriotic and lively, by comparison Ozpin had seemed oddly disconnected.

Naruto's attention, and eyes, flickered away from the stage as the woman took to the stage and began directing the students about. His attention instead drifted back to Ruby and her sister, both still listening to the woman speaking on the stage. Talking with Ruby had been… enlightening to say the least, and a welcome change from the chilly reception he had received from most so far. Ruby had been refreshingly cheerful after the morose airship ride, but more than that she had been incredibly open and easy to read. She was certainly a blow - though perhaps not quite a fatal one - to many of his theories pinning the blame of the Grimm invasion onto Vale's huntsmen.

It was hard to pair the image of a shadowy organisation such a theory brought forth with the bright eyed girl gushing about wanting to help people.

Beyond that, she had an odd air to her. An innocent, enthusiastic manner of being that had almost forced him to respond in kind; despite his mood. It had been nice to let go of all the darkness clouding his mind and just talk to someone, even if only for a short while.

With a sigh he forced himself to look away from the pair and walk off in the other direction. He had to at least try and keep himself neutral until he'd had a chance to investigate more. It wasn't at all Naruto's nature to cut himself off from others, but making friends here now would only make it harder on him later if Konoha's worst fears turned out to have some truth to them.

So rather than seeking out Ruby again Naruto turned against the flow of students and began to wander off. Goodwitch had told them where to sleep but given no other directions and the day was still young. He might as well go and explore his new surroundings for a while before turning in for the night.

* * *

Naruto had always found high places comforting for some reason, something about being so high and seeing the rest of the world just folding out below him just helped him to calm his thoughts.

Back in Konoha it was a common sight to see him perched atop the monument that towered over the village when he was upset. So it wouldn't have been a surprise to anyone who knew him - not that there was anyone who did on this continent - to see him sprawled atop one of the many towers that rose up out of the Beacon campus, one arm hanging lazily over the edge as he watched the sun set.

This whole thing hadn't really felt real until he had actually arrived, as though some part of his brain had still been waiting for the airship to turn around and take him back home right up until the point that he actually stepped foot onto solid ground. The view from up here was beautiful; the halls and towers of beacon abruptly dropping away into the lake that separated them from the city. Said lake was currently glinting orange as the now setting sun bounced off the still waters. Behind it was a nights sky worth of twinkling lights set against a dark backdrop; the city of Vale itself. Despite the impressive view, all that Naruto could think about though was how it wasn't Konoha, wasn't his true home.

As a ninja he had spent most of his life being told that it was both his duty and an honour to sacrifice anything and everything for the sake of the village. He had practically been raised to accept that one day he would be asked to give his life, so something as simple as moving to a new home should be easy.

But the feeling of abandonment and loneliness was hard to suppress as he looked out at thousands of buildings and saw not a single familiar one, as he spent entire days without hearing a single word of his own language unless he started talking to himself. Even the stars were different here on the other side of the world, constellations he had been using to navigate for years appearing in unfamiliar positions in the sky.

It was silent atop the tower except for the faint scratching of a pen against paper, accompanied by the occasional click of claws as the handsome hawk perched on the parapet behind Naruto's head shifted and gazed at him expectantly. Konoha messenger hawks were a special breed; cultivated over the years to be the strongest, most intelligent examples of their species possible. The birds were far more intelligent than any natural animal Naruto had ever known. They were even able to use chakra to strengthen their bodies and even manipulate the wind currents around them in order to long distances and, as was the case with Aka here, could be trained to seek out particular people by their chakra aura alone.

The report that Naruto was lazily writing up with his free hand had no real substance to it, just confirming that he had arrived safely. Aka had been sent to collect it more as a test that she could actually make the long journey across the sea between them than from any need for an immediate update.

How the bird had actually managed it Naruto had no clue, but distance had never yet stopped the messenger hawks from reaching their target and Aka had lived up to her reputation. With a faint grumble and a flourish of his pen Naruto finished the report and tied the small piece of paper around Aka's leg, giving the bird an affectionate rub across the beak before shooing her off into the night.

He was watching her disappear into the darkness when someone suddenly spoke from behind him.

"Good evening, Mr Uzumaki."

Naruto shot up with a start at the unexpected voice, twisting around to see them and only stopping himself falling off the tower by using a quick burst of chakra to stick himself to the rock. It had been a long while since someone had snuck up on him undetected, yet there stood Professor Ozpin; leaning casually on his cane with a cup of coffee in his other hand as though he had just finished a casual stroll.

"I- good evening," Naruto stammered, trying not to show how much Ozpin had shaken him up by appearing so suddenly.

"It's quite the view isn't it?" Ozpin commented casually, leaning against the wall of the tower and looking out at the sight Naruto had been staring at not long ago. "I find the view from Beacon can be very inspiring. It reminds me what we hunstmen stand for, what we fight to protect." He fell silent for a long while, just sipping his coffee and watching the sun set. Naruto was similarly quiet, watching Ozpin's face as he tried to figure the man out. Naruto had been expecting to get taken aside for a 'talk' with him at some point, but he had been preparing himself for something more like an interrogation than a pleasant chat.

Eventually Ozpin seemed to catch on that it wasn't going to be Naruto that broke the silence and turned his attention back to the blond. "I understand you travelled quite some way to get here Mr Uzumaki. How was the journey?" The questions were bewilderingly and frustratingly normal. If Ozpin had been drilling Naruto for information about Konoha he would have at least known how to react and divert his questions, but right now he was just confused.

"The journey was alright," he answered honestly, shuffling a foot about as he peered at Ozpin. "The view made up for the company."

Ozpin looked regretful for a moment, before nodding. "Fear of the unknown is a natural human trait, especially in a society beset on all sides by danger such as ours. It will lessen in time, as visitors between our lands become more common and your face becomes a regular sight to your classmates."

Naruto made an agreeable sound. "I won't fall apart just because some people don't like me," he said with determination. Naruto Uzumaki was not the sort of person who let himself crumble under the disapproval of others. He had dealt with crap like this once in his life already; it hadn't beaten him as a small child and it certainly wouldn't now.

"That's good to hear," Ozpin remarked, and Naruto was struck with the sudden feeling that he was being judged far more than he had initially thought with this conversation. How or why, he still couldn't figure out though.

"For a while you will find yourself with a challenge shared by only a few of our students. You have been told of the faunus yes?" Naruto nodded yes - his information packet had been sure to include plenty of information on the native cross between human and animal that was the faunus, lest Naruto mistake one for a shape-shifting demon - and Ozpin continued. "It is an unfortunate truth that many humans, even some of those within the academy, look unfavourable upon the faunus. They consider them lesser beings because of what they are, ignoring who they are; their actions and character." Ozpin's lips pursed in disapproval as he spoke and Naruto made an agreeable noise. Having been in a similar spot he couldn't help but empathise with the faunus.

Ozpin didn't show any sign of stopping talking. "Like many of our faunus students you will be faced with the challenge of forging the bonds that are so important to our line of work despite the misconceptions others will have about you. You will have to work to make your peers acknowledge you as a person above the preconceived notions many will hold."

Ozpin's voice had picked up in tone so subtly that Naruto almost didn't notice it, his attention captured by what he was saying. "Many would consider such a thing a disadvantage, but some would argue the opposite," Ozpin's tone placed him clearly in the latter camp. "A huntsman must be strong, both physically and mentally, to survive the tasks before us. With both of these qualities there is no better way to gain strength than to be tested, to overcome adversity through force of will. Many faunus students that attend this school fail to weather these trials, sadly. Those who remain though, often become some of the strongest huntsmen and huntresses to pass through these halls. Men and women that I am proud to call allies and friends." He paused a moment more, peering at Naruto over the top of his glasses. "I look forward to seeing how you will handle the challenges ahead of you, Mr Uzumaki."

That had certainly been quite the speech, Naruto mused as he sat back and gazed at Ozpin levelly. If he actually had any intention of becoming a huntsman he would certainly have been fired up and motivated now. Even now, with the knowledge that first and foremost he was still a ninja of Konoha, he found himself feeling more invigorated than he had all day. He still couldn't quite help himself but give Ozpin a determined nod as the speech ended.

Ozpin took another sip from his coffee, the slurp he made signalling an empty cup. "I won't take up any more of your time tonight Mr Uzumaki," he said, pushing away from the wall and starting to slowly walk away. "Tomorrow will be a testing day, I recommend that you rejoin your peers and ensure you are rested. Good night."

"Yeah, I'll do that. Good night," Naruto said faintly as he watched Ozpin walk away, feeling a sudden respect and wariness for the man that his dossier hadn't quite provoked. Naruto had barely said anything over the whole conversation, and he still somehow felt that Ozpin had been the one to get the best of it.

He cast one last look back at the setting sun before sighing and pushing himself to his feet. If even one of his suspicions about the initiation tomorrow were right, he wouldn't be doing himself any favours by skipping a night's sleep up here.

* * *

Ruby huffed as she hugged her corgi pillow and scribbled into her journal, studiously ignoring the blonde that lay besides her poking her in the ribs.

"Aww cmon sis, lighten up a bit," Yang pestered, slowly moving her fingers towards the ticklish spots on Ruby's side before yelping as she received a pillow to the face. The shorter girl sat up and huffed again, crossing her arms and glaring at her sister.

"I'm still not happy with you!" she declared, pointing dramatically at Yang's face. "You ditched me earlier, so I had to explode and deal with that Weiss girl by myself and then when I finally make a friend you go and scare him away!"

"Meh," Yang shrugged, flipping the pillow that had downed her so that it was beneath her head. "You should watch the news more Rubes. Those ninja guys are bad juju." Ruby huffed in response; Yang had an over-protective streak a mile wide when it came to Ruby, and the older girl had been more shaken up than she would admit by some of the darker news broadcasts she had caught about the inhabitants of the far off lands Naruto had come from.

"I'm a huntress now Yang, same as you. I didn't come to Beacon because I thought it would be safe and I don't need you to protect me all the time anymore!"

"Whatever you say sis," Yang replied dismissively. Ruby rolled her eyes and returned to her journal, pen skipping messily across the page as she scrawled all her thoughts about Beacon out onto the paper. She was just getting settled back into writing her letter for her friends back home when she heard Yang let out a low whistle, to which Ruby couldn't help but roll her eyes. A bunch of the male students apparently preferred to sleep topless and Yang had been very vocal about her appreciation of that fact.

She suddenly paid a bit more attention when Yang actually spoke. "Mmmm, we can add making ninja-boy wear that baggy jacket to the list of his people's crimes," her older sister purred, the tone making Ruby shudder before she actually processed the words.

Ruby took the bait and followed Yang's eyes to see what she was talking about, promptly blushing bright red. Naruto had returned from wherever he had disappeared to after Yang had scared him away and like many of the others he was topless, wearing only a pair of loose pants as he set his sleeping-bag out.

Despite standing shorter and leaner than the average Beacon male, it was obvious that the ninja was in good fighting shape. He moved with an unconscious grace and his smaller frame held clearly defined muscles that were getting him more than a few jealous looks. From across the room Ruby could just pick out the assortment of small scars that covered his body, and the oddly shaped swirling tattoos spreading across his arms and shoulders.

She quickly turned away, but not before Yang noticed her. "Shut up." Ruby muttered preemptively. Yang's eyes sparkled and she opened her mouth, only for Ruby's corgi pillow to nail her straight in it. The blonde fell back spluttering and Ruby gave her a glance. "I thought you didn't like him anyway?" she said hadn't taken well to being told that the boy who she counted as her first friend at Beacon was supposedly a member of a pack of dangerous murderers, nor was she completely convinced. Naruto had seemed nice earlier; a bit weird and quiet at first but hey, she had exploded herself so she couldn't talk about weird.

"I don't-" Yang replied, adding the corgi pillow to her collection and leaning back leisurely. "-but long as he stays over there and away from you, I can enjoy the view from a distance."

Not for much longer though. The lights were beginning to go out and a bunch of grumpy looking older students dispersing amongst the room to hush anyone still making noise. Muttering something indistinct about Yang's hypocrisy Ruby pulled her face mask down and wormed her way into her sleeping bag. "Night Yang," she mumbled around a yawn, twitching as she felt Yang's hand ruffling her head one last time before the older girl too settled down to sleep.

"Night sis."

* * *

**AN:**

**And there's the first real chapter. Not much exciting going on here, but setting the scene for later. I'd almost finished writing this chapter by the time the prologue was posted, so in the future updates will probably be a bit slower, around a week or so I'd guess. Blake has yet to appear yet since this was getting long, but she'll make her debut next chapter.**

**Glossary:**

**Hitai-ate: The metal-plated headband worn by ninja. Holds the symbol of the village on it.**


	3. Chapter 2: Head First

**Updated 02/05/2016: Spelling and Grammar corrections**

* * *

The air was buzzing with apprehension and excitement as the first year students began to congregate in the locker room, preparing themselves for their initiation into Beacon.

Some were spending the morning chatting with old and new-found friends, others were trying to burn off nervous energy by obsessively checking their equipment and undergoing last minute maintenance. The general nervousness had only been made worse by the older students who had been gleefully tight-lipped when asked for information about the task ahead of them, only sharing vague warnings about how dangerous it was.

One Naruto Uzumaki was preparing himself for the day with an almost-scalding hot shower. Even in the isolation of the shower cubicle and with the shrieking of the hot water system all around him, he could still hear the nervous thrum of the other students. Luckily, calming themselves down before a mission was something that any ninja had down to an art by the time they had reached Naruto's age, and he was no exception.

Despite the bracing environment he was in, Naruto couldn't quite hold back a yawn that forced its way out of his mouth. It was plain to see that despite his calm, the ninja wasn't in the best of conditions. His eyes were framed by dark bags and there was a trance-like edge to his movements that the warm water of the shower was only just starting to wash away.

Naruto's dreams had been troubled that night, the faces of his old team haunting his dreams like spectres. That had been fairly standard fare the past few weeks, but something had been… off about this one. The half formed fragments of memory felt alien somehow, like they didn't belong in his mind. It was a disquieting feeling, and had left Naruto feeling off balance ever since he had woken up early in the morning.

With a sigh and a shake of his head Naruto forced his thoughts back to the present, switching the water off and wrapping a towel around himself. There was far too much to do today to let himself get caught up in moping and pondering over bad dreams, that could wait until later.

The rest of the bathroom was deserted as Naruto emerged from the stall, giving Naruto the chance to stop at the mirrors as he passed them. He began to look over the tattoos that covered his chest and upper arms, making odd probing motions with two fingers. The way he was examining himself might seem narcissistic to an observer; but a ninja would recognise the motions he was making as chakra pulses sent into his own skin, and the tattoos as fūinjutsu arrays cleverly hidden within the swirling patterns.

Piece by piece Naruto began to send pulses of chakra through his arrays, making sure that everything was working properly. Fūinjutsu arrays tattooed straight into the skin like his required less maintenance than those drawn on paper or sewn into clothing, but could still fail if not looked after.

The chakra reservoir stretching back across his shoulder-blades was almost full, the emergency storage seal on his right shoulder was fully stocked and the battle-seal on his left arm that helped focus his chakra chains glowed a comforting orange as he activated it. Seal by seal Naruto worked through the seals he had made and designed himself - checking everything from the master seal that coordinated everything to the tiny seal behind his ear that counteracted motion sickness - before his eyes dropped to a less welcome piece of sealing resting on his stomach.

The spiral seal that held the Kyuubi trapped within Naruto's body appeared on cue as he cycled a small amount of chakra through it, a familiar spiral framed by eight 'arms' of esoteric script. Naruto frowned and winced faintly as he drew his fingers over the seal. The flesh beneath the ink was still tender to the touch and half-burned from the sheer force of the energy that had flowed through it, even over a month later. The Kyuubi's power was not a thing to be used lightly.

Satisfied that everything was working, Naruto quickly began to dress and check over the more physical elements of his equipment. Equipment maintenance was something drilled into every ninja and there was almost no point going through every single kunai and shuriken - of which he had many secreted around his body - as he did now.

Each and every piece of metal he owned was sharpened and oiled on at least a weekly basis, but going through and double checking everything like this was almost a ritual by this point. Another way for Naruto to calm and centre himself before the coming violence. He kept moving through the motions until the loudspeakers set into the wall crackled to life, Professor Goodwitch's voice calling the first year students to assemble atop the Beacon Cliffs.

* * *

The nervous air that had infected the locker rooms was even more potent as the students stood lined up before the cliffs, looking down on the Grimm filled forest that stretched out below them. The forest looked deceptively peaceful from up here, but the assembled trainees knew better than to trust the outwards appearance of the landscape.

Ozpin and Goodwitch both stood before the assembled students, the former holding his ever-present coffee cup and the latter one of the large scrolls that the Beacon staff used. Ozpin was giving the students one of those long, piercing looks that made the hairs on the back of Naruto's neck stand up before he began speaking. "For years, you have trained to become warriors. Today, your abilities will be evaluated in the Emerald Forest."

Goodwitch stepped forwards, "Now, I'm sure many of you have heard rumours about the assignment of teams," she began, "Well, allow us to put an end to your confusion. Each of you will be given teammates. Today." From a few places to his left Naruto heard a small groan from Ruby, though he kept his face straight and didn't look.

As Goodwitch stepped back Ozpin took up where she left off. "These teammates will be with you for the rest of your time here at Beacon. So, it is in your best interest to be paired with someone else whom you can work well." The groaning from Ruby grew even louder and Naruto just managed to hold his grin in. Several others were less successful and earned a sharp glance from Goodwitch alongside Ruby.

Ozpin had one last blow to land. "That being said, the first person you make eye contact with after landing will be your partner for the next four years."

This time Ruby actually cried out in distress and Naruto couldn't help flicking his eyes over to look at her. The younger girl looked like her life had just fallen apart before her eyes, and was casting a desperate look over at Yang. Ozpin cleared his throat to bring everyone's attention back to him. "After you've partnered up, make your way to the northern end of the forest. You will meet opposition along the way. Do not hesitate to destroy everything in your path, or you will die."

Naruto was sure that between Ruby and the over-dramatic speech - not to mention the entirely too serious reactions from many of the students - Ozpin_ had_ to be laughing internally. The man gave no sign of it though, inscrutable as always. "You will be monitored and graded through the duration of your initiation, but our instructors will not intervene," he continued, "You will find an abandoned temple at the end of the path, containing several relics. Each pair must choose one and return to the top of the cliff. You will guard that item, as well as your standing, and we will grade you appropriately. Are there any questions?"

Aside from Ruby's quiet, shell-shocked murmuring the cliff was silent. "Good! Now, take your positions."

One by one the silver panels beneath their feet began to spring violently forwards, flinging them into the air. As one of the last to be sprung Naruto watched down the line as his turn slowly approached. Most of the students took being flung off a cliff towards a monster filled forest rather lightly; Yang slipping on a pair of sunglasses and disappearing into the air with a loud whoop while Ruby recovered enough to give him a grin and a quick wave before she too disappeared.

And then Naruto's turn sneaked up on him and with sudden, gut-wrenching motion he was thrown into the air. Naruto laughed as he watched the forest fly past below him, enjoying the feeling of weightlessness for a few seconds before getting down to business.

Naruto began to seep his chakra out into the air around him, using his wind element to create small wind currents to guide his path. He aimed himself for one of the largest trees he could see, sprouting a sturdy looking branch that wouldn't have been out of place in the titanic forests around Konoha. He span in the air as he approached and began focusing chakra into his legs, saturating bone and muscle with more chakra than a normal human had at all.

There was a sharp crack as Naruto hit the tree, splinters of wood flying out as his landing carved a small crater into the wood. The chakra had done its job though and after a second Naruto rose from his landing crouch, a grin on his face. The fact that he was standing at a ninety degree angle to the trunk, gravity dragging his hair and clothes straight forwards from his perspective, barely fazed him as all.

While the sounds of gunfire and explosions rang out as the other students continued to fall, the actual forest itself was deathly silent. Naruto took a moment to calm himself, scanning his surroundings. It didn't take long for him to spot the signs of something moving through the forest, unnaturally large footprints moving through a trail of broken branches and bushes.

A splash of trepidation entered Naruto's mind, but it was tempered by a growing excitement and he quickly moved to begin stalking along the tracks. Over the past few weeks the blond-haired ninja had been itching to exact some revenge against the monsters who had taken his team away from him. It seemed he would have plenty of chance for that today.

* * *

In another section of the forest, a busty blonde had just finished her somewhat more flashy - not to mention explosive - but equally effective landing strategy. Throwing explosive rounds at random until the recoil had slowed her down enough to land safely wasn't exactly subtle, but then subtle had never really been Yang's thing.

As soon as she hit the ground Yang tucked her aviators into her jacket and started jogging through the forest, craning her head to look around for the red clad form of her sister. "Rubes? Where you at sis?" she called out as she went, frowning when her sister failed to suddenly appear in a cloud of rose petals.

At first she had been tempted to purposely avoid being Ruby's partner - she loved her sister, she really did, but she really needed to learn to socialise with other people more - but after hearing _how_ the partners were chosen and seeing Ruby's desperate look, she had reconsidered. Yang was terrible at resisting Ruby's puppy-dog eyes if she let herself be caught in their gaze.

Besides, there were plenty of strange and dangerous looking people in their class and that was just the ones that Yang had seen so far. And the boys. Though nice to look at, Yang didn't like the idea of one of the boys she had been ogling last night sleeping in the same room as her sweet, innocent, younger sister. _Nope._ Finding Ruby, claiming her as her partner and then resigning her right foot to giving the redhead many kicks up the arse to go socialise with people definitely seemed like the safest choice at the moment.

A bush near her rustled and she perked up, sauntering over and poking her head through the leaves. "Ruby, is that y-"

She was cut off as a pair of enormous jaws snapped shut an inch away from her face, the putrid breath of a Grimm washing over her. Yang jumped back nimbly as a large Ursa lumbered out of the bush after her, growling threateningly.

"Wow Rubes, you've really let yourself go," the blonde quipped, sporting a carefree grin as she watched a second Ursa emerged to join the first. With a twist of her wrists she activated Ember Celia and brought her fists up into a loose boxer's stance. The golden bracelets she wore clicked and morphed into their gauntlet form, revealing the loops of shotgun shells feeding around them and the barrels emerging just above her fists.

For a moment Yang and the Ursai squared off against each other, until she snorted and made a come-hither gesture. "Bring it."

As though they understood her, the Ursai began charging wildly towards her. Yang simply grinned and charged right back at them, at the last minute firing an explosive shot at the ground that sent her sailing over their heads. She landed in a crouch and quickly spun around, peppering the Urasi's backsides with shotgun slugs as she sent some quick shadow punches their way.

Ursai were easy to deal with. Yeah they were big as a car, as fast as one and hit like a truck, but even by Grimm standards they were dumb as a pile of bricks and their speed vanished when they tried to do pretty much anything except run in a straight line. For a regular soldier, Ursai were terrifying. For a more mobile fighter like a huntress, less so. If you were quick on your feet and had a ranged weapon to pick away at them they were pretty easy to deal with, only the incredibly old ones were capable of anything more tactical than a frontal charge.

Sure enough the two Ursai began to charge straight at her, roaring in pain and anger. Yang's grin became feral and she stood her ground until the last minute when she danced to one side, delivering a devastating shotgun-enhanced punch straight to the side of the lead Ursa's head and sending it to the ground. The other tried to swipe at her but she deflected the blow with one gauntlet and back-flipped away with the other hand, slamming her boot into the underside of the Ursa's jaw as she went.

Yang linked her arms behind her head casually and watched the pair roll around on the ground, showing absolutely no care for the angry snarls directed her way. "So-" she began casually, as though just chatting to a couple of her friends. "-I'm pretty busy right now. I'm looking for my sister - short girl with a red hood if you've seen her - so how about I let you two off with a warn-" She was cut off when the Ursa she had kicked lunged at her again with a clumsy swipe of its paws. Yang tilted her head to one side and let the claws sail past her before sending the Ursa stumbling back with a quick punch to the snout.

"When Ozpin said this place was dangerous," Yang snorted, racking fresh shells into Ember Celia, "he sure as hell wasn't talking about you tw-" Yang stopped dead as a small curl of blonde hair drifted past her vision, torn free by the Ursa's claws. She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth, trying and failing to contain her building rage at this desecration of her precious locks.

Yang's eyes opened red and the Ursai had a split second to realise just how badly they had messed up before she let out a war cry and charged them, aiming first for the Ursa that had caught her hair. An uppercut sent it rearing backwards and Yang darted in to deliver a blistering rain of blows to its soft underbelly, shotgun blasts sounding and ribs shattering with every blow. The Ursa fell forwards limply and Yang caught it with both arms above her head, sending it flying upwards with one final blast from both gauntlets.

The other one wasted no time rearing up onto two legs and charging forwards at her. Just as Yang turned to face it two gunshots rang out from the forest behind it, each one taking out one of its knees. The Ursa stumbled down and just had time to let out a confused growl before a blade burst out of its throat. The Grimm fell to the ground and Yang was treated to the sight of an amber eyed girl with monochrome clothing, a black bow sat atop wavy hair of the same colour. The girl gave Yang a small smirk as she yanked on the ribbon leading to the pistol/sword hybrid currently sticking through the Ursa, bringing it back to her hand.

"I could've taken him," Yang said after a beat of silence, returning the smirk as she looked her new partner in the eyes. _Sorry Rubes, looks like I'm taken. Good luck._

* * *

Back in another section of the forest a small pack of eight Beowolves lumbered along peacefully, sniffing at the forest around them as they slowly went about whatever business Grimm had when they weren't killing humans.

Perched in a tree above the pack, Naruto Uzumaki surveyed his prey with eager eyes. He was itching to dive into the fight but managed to hold himself back as the Beowolves approached the branch he was perched on, taking a moment to look them over. All the Beowolves below him bore white masks of bone covering their face like the ones he had encountered in Hikomi, but they were much smaller. Only one, heading up the group as though a leader, even began to approach the size of the beasts that had previously brought Naruto and his team low.

Naruto's eyes were fixed on the largest as he watched the Beowolves unknowingly approach him, taking out the leader was always a good start. The blond ninja raised one hand and began to focus and spin his chakra, quickly forming it up into a swirling blue ball that hovered just over the palm of his hand. Taking one last breath Naruto loosened the chakra in his feet, letting himself slide upside down on the branch and jumping directly down.

"Rasengan!" The largest Beowolf looked up into the air as he yelled out, mouth opening briefly in surprise before the rasengan drilled straight through the mask covering its face. Naruto landed in a crouch and the remaining Beowolves quickly moved to encircle him, but at the last minute he formed a seal and substituted himself with a rock that he had placed earlier, which fizzled for a moment before exploding as the explosive tags plastered to it detonated.

When the smoke cleared two more Beowolves had joined their leader, motionless on the ground. The remaining wolves charged towards Naruto with fearsome snarls and he treated them to a barrage of kunai before rushing to meet them eagerly, wakizashi glowing white with wind chakra the second it left its sheath. He lopped the arm off one Beowolf and span into the middle of the pack, slashing at two more before flipping neatly upwards over their heads, grinning as two of the beasts collided mid-charge.

The Beowolves were on him as soon as he landed, but without the overwhelming numbers they had held at the village they just weren't quick enough to contend with a ninja, and it was fairly easy for Naruto to control the fight. He danced nimbly around and through the Beowolves, handing out cuts and slashes like candy as he struck at limbs to weaken the rampaging beasts. At one point he took a minor wound - Beowolf claws deflecting off his bracer and cutting lightly into his upper arm - in order to get in close to one of them. The offending Beowolf lost the arm it had struck him with, and shortly after its head.

Soon enough there were only three wolves left, panting and bleeding heavily as they snarled at him. Naruto gave them a cocky grin before charging in once more, neatly beheading one of the beasts with a blurred slash. For a split second though he had underestimated them, and in that momentary lapse of concentration they had struck. The remaining two were now attacking from either side of him, too close to jump out of the way.

Naruto's wakizashi blurred out of existence, becoming little more than a glint of light as he unleashed a rapid combination of attacks that left one of his attackers literally falling apart. The one behind him was close though, a mouth filled with teeth the size of daggers snapping at his head. All Naruto had time to do was steel himself for the blow and flip his wakizashi close to his body, bracing the hilt against his chest so that the Beowolf would impale itself as it lunged towards him.

Suddenly a deafening boom echoed through the clearing and, inches from Naruto's face, the Beowolf's head dissolved into a fine red mist. Shocked by the sharp crack of the round Naruto span to face its source, eyes meeting the familiar rifle-wielding figure of a certain red-cloaked girl.

"Hey there, partner," Ruby grinned, lightly patting Crescent Rose's still smoking barrel.

* * *

**AN: Thanks a bunch to everyone who's been following, favouriting and reviewing this! Really happy with the response I've been getting so far considering that this is my first fic.**


	4. Chapter 3: The Deep End

Weiss Schnee wore a very satisfied smile as she pushed her way through the dense foliage of the Emerald Forest, despite the varied collection of colourful stains marring her white combat skirt that would have otherwise had her in an awful mood.

The reason for the Schnee heiress' good cheer came in the form of the crimson and gold spartan following close behind her, keeping a watchful eye on the forest around them as they went. Weiss' plans were coming together perfectly; the smartest student in the school - her - and the strongest - Pyrrha - on a team. They were going to be unstoppable! All she needed to do now was prove to the staff that she was the right choice to lead her team and things would be perfect! She'd like to see her father find something negative to comment on when she delivered that news.

Actually, scrap that. Knowing him he'd probably find something.

All that was left now between her and glory was the pesky little matter of actually getting through the initiation. This damned forest was as much of a nightmare to navigate in as it was to actually push through, but almost an hour of searching had at least produced a possible lead.

"I'm not sure this is it," Pyrrha piped up from behind her, casting a wary look at what Weiss had found. The cave before them was fairly sinister looking, and the depictions of humans fighting Grimm painted onto the stone around it didn't help matters there.

Weiss crossed her arms defensively. "It's the first thing we've found that isn't a tree or a Grimm," she truth she wasn't too enthusiastic about the cave either but walking through the forest endlessly was just getting frustrating.

She pressed the matter, "It's worth a quick look at least. Five minutes." After how long they had spent wandering in circles Pyrrha couldn't argue with that and Weiss smiled victoriously, striding towards the cave.

It was pitch black inside but that was easily solved. Weiss fished a pale yellow crystal of lightning dust from her pouch and with a very careful application of aura it started to glow dimly, giving them enough light to move forwards by. Weiss had to fight down a shiver as the dim light from the crystal revealed yet more paintings of humans fighting, and being killed by, Grimm.

Looking at the drawings, Weiss couldn't help but feel oddly reassured by the faint click behind her as Pyrrha flicked the safety off Miló's rifle form. She mentally scolded herself and kept moving. She was the Schnee heiress and a huntress-in-training and her father had made it very clear that he expected her to act with the dignity expected of those positions. Getting scared because of some ancient paintings was below her.

"I'm really not sure that this is it," Pyrrha commented lightly from behind her, running a gloved hand along the wall. "This place feels more like a grave than a temple." Weiss turned her head to answer her and in that momentary lapse of concentration slipped and fell. The crystal slipped from her hand, plunging them into darkness but mercifully not detonating, and Weiss landed straight in a puddle of what she hoped was stagnant cave water.

"That's going to take forever to wash out," she griped, groping about blindly on the ground for the crystal she had dropped. Hopefully it hadn't gone far; she only carried one lightning crystal on her and using fire for something so controlled as producing light was… risky.

Pyrrha's voice seemed to hold the faintest hint of amusement in it as Weiss heard the sounds of her partner too searching for the crystal. "Perhaps white isn't the best colour for huntressing?"

Weiss didn't even dignify that with an answer beyond an annoyed sniff. Her mood rose a bit when a bright yellow glow suddenly lit up just ahead of her, the light unerringly stable despite the amount of aura Pyrrha must be putting into it to get such a bright glow. "Nice control," she commented appreciatively. The crystal was even giving off a faint feeling of warmth!

She froze in dread when Pyrrha's voice met her ears, originating from several feet behind her. "That… isn't me." Slowly Weiss looked up at the bright yellow light hovering inches before her face, and the lesser red lights just behind it.

Her father certainly wouldn't have considered the stream of curses that ran from Weiss' mouth dignified, nor the scrambled retreat that she and Pyrrha beat from the cave. At that moment, with a pissed off Deathstalker chasing her and snapping at her backside, Weiss couldn't have cared less.

* * *

Ruby's day was going significantly better then Weiss'. The red-cloaked girl was mentally dancing in happiness and outwardly trying to remain cool as she nudged one of the disintegrating Beowolf corpses with her boot.

_Yes, yes, yes!_ THAT was how Ruby had wanted her first impressions to go! Saving someone at the last minute, check. Awesome entrance, check! Badass one-liner, CHECK!

It would have been better it Naruto hadn't already met her - and seen her explode herself in the course of doing so - but Ruby would take all the little victories she could get, and the dumbstruck look on Naruto's face as he received a demonstration of what a .50 calibre dust-powered bullet could do to a Beowolf was definitely one of those.

"So, uh-" Ruby began before stuttering to a halt. She'd been intending to keep up her badass speech but, faced with actual social interaction, whatever she had intended to say fled her mind and left her to flush red as Naruto looked at her expectantly. "You know where we're going?" she finished weakly. Hopefully he wouldn't have noticed.

Naruto gave her a small grin -_ oh god he noticed_. Ruby Rose, master of first impressions - and shook his head. "Nope. I was never very good at navigating," he admitted. Well, at least she wasn't the only one who didn't go where they were going. "How about you?"

"Yep!" Ruby chirped confidently, mouth and desire to impress working faster than her brain. _Oh God. Mouth, why have you betrayed me?!_ "Uhh, I mean, I've got a plan to find out!" That was better at least, gave her a bit of time to actually figure something out. Naruto didn't look entirely convinced, but motioned for her to lead the way.

As she turned to do so she noticed something. "Hey, Naruto, are you alright?" she asked, "You're uh, kinda bleeding all over the place." Indeed, Naruto was bleeding rather heavily from his upper arm where one of the Beowolves had caught him. He looked confused for some reason as he looked at the wound, hand probing it and coming away slick with fresh blood.

"Huh, that's weird." He commented, seemingly more to himself than her. "I normally heal quicker than that." That seemed a bit weird to Ruby; usually a cut like that would take at least a quarter of an hour before aura started to seal it up, but maybe Naruto had a really strong aura or something? The boy pulled a bandage out from one of his pouches and quickly wrapped his arm up, looking oddly troubled over something so simple as his aura not working as quickly as usual.

"Aura can be weird sometimes." She said, trying to reassure him. "It changes depending on a bunch of stuff. When I was six I got scared by this clown and broke my nose running away and I got so upset that it did something weird to my aura and it healed in about a minute." Her voice slowed down to a crawl towards the end of the short tale as she realised that she could have perhaps used a less embarrassing example.

Sure enough Naruto had a teasing grin on his face, almost reminding her of a male Yang for a moment. "You got scared by a clown and broke your own nose?"

"I was six! Clowns are scary when you're six." Ruby protested. She still found them pretty creepy, but decided to keep that piece of information to herself. "I panicked and activated my semblance for the first time by accident. One moment this creepy-ass clown is coming at me and the next, _zoom_, straight into a lamp-post."

Naruto didn't look any less amused by her explanation, and so before he could continue that conversation Ruby interrupted him. "ANYWAY! Onwards, to the temple!" she exclaimed, pointing roughly north and moving swiftly before he could ask any more questions.

The pair made quick progress through the forest from there, Naruto following Ruby's lead as she split her attention between pretending she knew where they needed to go and trying to actually figure it out. Luckily inspiration had come to her soon and Naruto seemed content to continue following her once her footsteps had taken on a more confident beat.

Despite Ozpin's dire warnings they didn't actually encounter much more resistance as they strolled casually through the forest. They had encountered one more small group of young Beowolves and Ruby had made short work of most of those, dashing ahead of Naruto with a burst of speed and tearing through them with the sweeping motions that made up the basics of her fighting style. Things almost turned ugly when a small group split off and sneaked up behind her, the lead Beowolf coming within inches of sinking its teeth into her neck before some invisible force had picked it and its companions up and thrown them against a nearby cliff face.

When Ruby had spun around she had found her saviour to be Naruto, keeping the wolves pinned in place with a stream of wind from his mouth. Before she could make herself useful he had tossed a small piece of paper into the stream, which detonated after a few seconds and incinerated the Grimm as the flames spread rapidly across the wind. Naruto just gave her a grin, but Ruby inwardly scolded herself for not being more careful.

"Is that your semblance?" Ruby asked curiously, leaning closer as though peering at Naruto would reveal his secrets. It gave her a great view of his blank, confused look.

"My what?" he asked blankly. After a few seconds a light seemed to pop on behind his eyes as though he had just remembered something. "Oh right, semblance. Uh, no. I don't have a semblance."

_What._ "But, then, how're you doing stuff like that without any dust?" she exclaimed, making vaguely wind like motions with her waving arms as though it would help clarify what she meant by 'stuff'.

Naruto just shrugged, fiddling with the pouch he had pulled the paper bomb out from before. "By using my chakra. All ninja can do stuff like that."

"What's cha-"

"Ask me later," Naruto cut her off with a faint smile. "When we're not in the middle of a monster filled forest maybe?" Ruby gave a sheepish nod and turned away to scan the tree-line around them. She half wanted- no scratch that she _did_ want something big and scary to come lumbering out of the trees, just so she could kill it.

It was frustrating. So far Naruto had been just as quiet as he had yesterday and Ruby was beginning to worry that her new partner wasn't happy that he'd ended up with her. He'd barely been breathing hard after either of their fights, despite how fast he had been moving in the first or the elemental stuff he had pulled out in the second, so he was obviously skilled; maybe he thought she was too far below him? She needed something interesting to happen so that she could actually show him how awesome she was! Not these cannon-fodder Beowolves attacking them in such small groups as though they were random encounters in some video game. She needed a boss fight.

"So, where are we going anyway?" Naruto's voice cut through her moping and she straightened up, the details of her brilliant plan coming back to her in a flash.

"Here!" she exclaimed happily, waving her arms as though to present the cliff-side to him.

"Uhh, Ruby, I don't think that's a temple."

Ruby frowned and propped her hands on her hips, looking at Naruto through narrowed eyes. "Well, duh, I'm not stupid y'know?" Naruto muttered something that she didn't quite hear and chose to ignore. "We can climb the cliffs and look for the temple from the top," she explained excitedly. Before Naruto had a chance to respond Ruby shot up the cliff, using her semblance and shots from Crescent Rose to zip from rock to rock in a cloud of rose petals.

The Emerald Forest somehow looked so peaceful from up atop the cliff, almost as though it wasn't filled with disappointingly weak monsters that nonetheless lusted for their blood. Ruby hummed casually and began strolling over to the other edge of the cliff, only to scramble around in shock when she heard something moving behind her. A pair of hands popped up over the edge and Naruto neatly flipped himself up to join her atop the cliff. "Wha, how did you?" Ruby stammered, wondering how he had followed her so quickly without a semblance like hers.

The only response she received was an unhelpful grin. Ruby huffed and started looking down at the forest below them, trying to pick out anything that looked like a man-made structure. "What exactly would this temple look like?" Naruto asked her, peering out at the forest below.

Ruby just shrugged her shoulders unhelpfully. "I dunno. There aren't many buildings this far out of the city, so just look for anything man-made." It took her a while, but eventually she caught sight of what looked like some sort of stone structure sitting atop a hill not too far away from them.

"Ooh! Ooh! I see it!" she called excitedly, scrambling closer to the edge. Ruby was so focused on the structure she had seen that she didn't notice the crumbling earth at the edge of the cliff until it was too late. The edge of the cliff collapsed under her feet and she began to fall forwards with a shriek, Crescent Rose flying free from her grasp. She heard Naruto cry out her name and grab the back of her cloak, but he was able to do little more than get himself dragged down as well. Ruby closed her eyes and waited for her inevitable death, only to have the air thrown out of her lungs by a painful but decidedly non-fatal blow.

She opened her eyes to the same sky that she had been looking at all day, the lip of the cliff not far above her. Huh, not dead then.

Looking around further revealed that she had been lucky enough to land in a small hollow sticking out from the edge of the cliff. Even luckier, the hollow was filled with greenery and odd black fluff that had softened her landing. "Well, that's convenient." She commented, stretching a kink out of her neck. Now we've just gotta climb out of here and we're almost done!"

The silence that greeted her was unnerving and after Naruto failed to reply Ruby turned around to find him staring into the air, face set in horror. "Naruto? What's wro-" Ruby froze with her mouth open as she followed his gaze up and into the air. "Oh," she finished quietly, realising exactly what they had landed in as a massive shadow descended upon them.

* * *

This Ursa was a magnificent and terrifying beast, the sort of creature that could stand in front of a speeding car and come off the winner in the subsequent collision. It bore teeth that could tear straight through a human and spikes almost as long as Ren was tall, which was impressive considering that Ren stood a hair above six foot tall. There was a kind of morbid beauty to creatures like this, to see something that almost seemed purposely designed for the singular task of killing.

This deadly, breathtaking creature was… currently collapsed on the ground, whimpering and twitching in the closest equivalent to begging for mercy that a Grimm could actually perform.

"Awww, it's broken," the orange haired girl commented sadly, prodding the creature with her foot as it finally expired. After giving the Ursa a practical demonstration of why explosions and hammers were _awesome_ and something that should be combined at any available opportunity, Nora had proceeded to ride the wounded beast around the forest like a mule until it had collapsed.

"Nora." Ren gasped, leaning against the corpse and feeling like his lungs were about to explode. "Please, never do that again." The black-haired, green-clad boy lacked the pure stamina of his energetic companion at the best of times, so trying to keep up with her when she was mounted had damn near killed him. "Do you even know where we are?"

Nora hummed, one hand propped under her chin in a thinking posture. "I'm sure that Smokey knew where to go?" she offered weakly, the faintest hint of an actual apology hidden beneath the carefree words. Ren stared at her blankly for a few moments, before he finally made the connection between 'Smokey' and the bear-like Grimm. He winced sympathetically and patted the beast. Poor Ursa. Sure, it was a bloodthirsty monster that would have torn him apart in an instant if he gave it the chance, but it didn't deserve _this_.

Ren's moment of silence for the Ursa was broken by the faint sound of violent rustling approaching them through the forest. Nora perked up and jumped down from the Ursa's corpse, pulling Magnhild from her back and unfolding the weapon into its mighty hammer form. The grin on her face was slightly manic as she watched the approaching rustle in the bushes, ready to crush whatever came jumping out at them. At least she was until an exhausted girl in a white dress came stumbling out, followed shortly by a red haired girl in much better condition.

"Awwww," Nora said sadly, Magnhild's head dropping to the ground. The red haired girl scanned her rifle across the bushes she had just come from while the other approached them, looking just barely able to stand.

"Run... you fools…" she wheezed out, having to stop and prop herself up on her knees.

A second passed and then with an almighty crash an enormous Deathstalker tore through the bushes, almost decapitating the red-haired girl and giving the other the motivation needed to continue running again. Nora let out a cheer and began to charge the beast before Ren managed to catch the scruff of her neck. He span his friend around and gave her a shove in the proper direction - _away_ from the giant, bloodthirsty Grimm - before moving to make some swift progress that way himself.

* * *

"HOW THE HELL WAS THIS PART OF YOUR PLAN?!" Naruto screamed over the wind, clinging on for dear life and wishing that chakra suction worked better with living creatures.

"WE'RE FINE! AT LEAST WE CAN SEE THE TEMPLE NOW, CAN'T WE?!" Ruby replied, clinging to the other leg of the giant Nevermore that was carrying them through the air.

"AND HOW THE HELL ARE WE SUPPOSED TO GET DOWN TO IT?!"

"I DUNNO, JUMP?!"

"YOU'VE GOTTA BE KIDDING ME!"

"YOU GOT ANY BETTER IDEAS?!"

"..."

* * *

"Well, that was easy," Yang commented, idly balancing the chess piece she had picked up atop her index finger. The 'temple' was rather disappointing, just a couple standing-stones surrounding a set of pedestals that had contained chess pieces of varying types and colours.

"It wasn't exactly hard to find." Blake agreed. Both Yang and Blake were capable fighters and had torn straight through the sparse resistance they had encountered from the forest, Blake leading them north with an uncanny sense of direction.

Yang flicked the chess piece like a coin and caught it, tucking it away in a pouch on her belt. "What now? Think we should wait for some of the others?"

Blake wasn't paying attention to Yang though, but gazing upwards with a bemused look on her face. Casually, as though doing something completely normal, the black-haired girl reached out and tugged at Yang's arms so that she was holding them out before her. For a few moments Yang was too confused to move her arms from where Blake had positioned them, and before she could question her about it a screaming black blur fell out of the sky and straight into her arms.

Yang stared open mouthed at her little sister, now sat in bridal position in her arms, while Ruby herself watched tiny Beowolves dancing above her head with spinning eyes. "My hero," the dazed girl muttered.

"Where the hel- heck did you come from Rubes?" Yang exclaimed, catching her curse at the last minute as she remembered that her younger sister was there now. Ruby didn't seem to have noticed and gave her a sheepish grin, having recovered a bit.

"Oh, you know, just thought I'd drop by."

Yang's face, which had been growing in happiness at seeing her sister alive and un-mauled, dropped instantly into an exaggerated frown. She glanced at Blake - who mirrored her frown and gave her a theatrical thumbs down - and promptly dumped Ruby onto the ground backside first.

"Ow, why?! You do it!" Ruby protested, picking herself up and rubbing her behind.

"I'm older. And better at it than you." Yang replied smugly, ruffling Ruby's hair. The smaller girl flailed in protest - in vain, her head was at perfect rubbing height for Yang - before managing to free herself and casting a curious glance around.

"So where's Na-" Ruby began, before glancing upwards as they heard another yell above them. Yet another figure was falling above them, the sound of faint curses filtering down towards them. "Oh, there he is."

Yang backed away from the falling figure, crossing her arms. "I'm not catching this one." She said before glancing at Ruby questioningly. "Who is your partner anyway?"

Her question was quickly answered as the air around them was suddenly filled with popping and smoke, which cleared to reveal a dozen Narutos standing around them. Yang yelped and reflexively deployed Ember Celia, glancing around at the figures. Was this an ambush?

As it turned out, no. The assembled Narutos ignored them entirely in favour of throwing themselves to the ground at a single point, forming a pile of bodies directly below the falling original. There was a series of loud pops and a billowing cloud of smoke as the falling figure smashed into the suicidal mound. After a few seconds it cleared to reveal the original Naruto, rubbing the small of his back and giving Ruby a baleful look.

_Oh. God. Dammit._

Out of all the strange, dangerous and male possibilities for teammates for Ruby so have run into, she'd hit all three points and gone for ninja-boy. She'd been hoping that Ruby would partner up with someone strong, yes, but safe and normal. Not the guy who had probably stepped onto the airship across the sea fresh from murdering a bunch of Vale explorers. Ruby rubbed the back of her head sheepishly and muttered an apology to Naruto, her downcast expression making Yang's eyes narrow even further. Before anyone could say anything more, any growing tension was abruptly shattered when a pained voice croaked out from the ground. "I- I gave my life… for the cause."

As one the group looked down to see the figure of one of Naruto's clones, broken and battered but still alive. There was a beat of awkward silence before Naruto cleared his throat and ended the survivor's life with a swift stomp to the throat, wincing as its memories entered his mind.

Yang was the first to recover, shaking her head like a confused dog before pointing at Naruto with narrowed eyes. "You. My sister. Falling from the sky. How? Why?" she demanded. Naruto gulped and backed away from the crazed looking girl. If Yang had looked angry at seeing him hanging around Ruby yesterday, then finding out that they were now _partners_ had taken it to a whole new level. Yang cracked her knuckles and began to advance towards him, a sinister look in her eyes.

"I imagine it has something to do with that giant Nevermore." Blake commented blandly, pointing towards the still circling shape of the great bird. Yang's head darted from Naruto to Blake and back so fast it was almost audible, fire flickering within the blonde curls cascading down her shoulders.

"Heyheyhey, That was Ruby's idea." he defended, backing away from Yang just the slightest. Yang could just hear him muttering something about a 'Tsunade'. What a Tsunade was or why he was muttering about it she had no clue, but it seemed to scare him. _Good._ It was then that his claim actually processed in her brain and her head snapped to Ruby with a questioning glare. When Ruby just giggled sheepishly and failed to deny the claims Yang turned on her with a disbelieving shout, prompting the smaller girl to flee towards the ruins with the blonde hot on her trail.

As he watched the two scuffle about Naruto sidled over to Blake, mirroring her pose as the two leaned against a wall with their arms crossed. "So," he muttered quietly, watching Yang hold Ruby in a tight headlock while she yelled out a lecture, "is yours as… spazzy as mine?"

Blake took a moment to reply, eyes fixed thoughtfully on the two of them. Ruby had escaped Yang's hold and was now clinging to her back; legs wrapped across the older girl's chest while she tried to get her arms around Yang's neck in a choke-hold. "Not as bad," the amber eyed girl finally said, "but it definitely runs in the family."

There was a moment of silence before the two shared a grin and moved away from the wall to break the fight up. After some prying and threatening they managed to separate the two, Naruto literally carrying Ruby away from Yang over his shoulder while the girl flailed her arms out behind him and growled. Yang was equally ungracious; sticking her tongue out and making vaguely obscene gestures from behind Blake.

The levity was promptly struck from the scene when something exploded distressingly close nearby. "What the hell is going on now?" Yang snapped, abruptly swinging moods from childish to angry as yet another thing seemed poised to go wrong. Things had been going so well up until now. She'd found herself a badass teammate and been kicking some ass throughout the forest; good ingredients for a good day. Now her sister was turning up falling from the sky, she'd been partnered with literally the worst possible partner as far as Yang was concerned - even that bitchy girl who had yelled at Ruby yesterday would have been _slightly_ better - and now stuff was exploding. Someone or some_thing_ was going to pay.

Three sets of eyes fixed on Yang expectantly as the bushes at the edge of the clearing rustled, and a group of four students practically fell out of them. Yang felt slightly vindicated to see Weiss practically being dragged along by Pyrrha and Ren; each one pulling one of the exhausted girl's arms as they stumbled together up the hill. By comparison Nora was practically skipping alongside them, firing random shots from her grenade launcher into the forest behind them as she went.

Weiss flopped down onto the grass as the groups were united with each other. "I'll… never skip… gym again." The heiress panted, clutching her heart.

"Slightly less crazy than I was expecting." Yang said begrudgingly, turning to Nora. "Why were you-" She was interrupted by a high-pitched screech as the Deathstalker burst through the treeline, snapping its pincers in the air and waving its stinger-clad tail threateningly.

Nora's cheerfully raised finger was entirely unnecessary as Yang looked blankly at the Grimm for a few seconds before dropping her head down into her hands. "I… You know what? I'm not even going to question this shit anymore." In the background Naruto elbowed Ruby in the ribs as she began to make a remark about Yang's language and Blake began slowly backing away from the blonde.

Yang managed to control herself and cast a glance between the assembled group, the angry scorpion and the giant bird circling slowly in the distance. "Well, at least we can all die together." She quipped, forcing a pained grin onto her face.

Yang didn't notice Ruby's eyes lighting up - noticing the opportunity to show her skills that she had been waiting for - until the younger girl had already unfolded her scythe and cocked a round. "Not if I can help it," the redhead said, grinning confidently.

Yang's heart missed a beat and she lunged for Ruby's cape, but her sister had already zipped away and Yang's fingers closed over nothing except petals. She cried out as the Deathstalker casually swatted Ruby out of the air and began to loom over the downed girl, pincers clacking menacingly. Ruby tried to retreat with another shot from her scythe but the Nevermore from earlier chose now to swoop back in, releasing a hail of razor sharp feathers that pinned Ruby in place by her cloak and almost impaled Yang as she rushed to help.

Despite running as fast as she could, Yang knew there was no chance of her reaching Ruby before the Deathstalker's stinger. That didn't stop her from trying though, and through her tunnel vision she barely noticed the black and yellow blur that shot past her until she heard a voice cry out.

"Kongō Fūsa!"

* * *

For the second time that day, Ruby had closed her eyes in expectation of death and come out the other end surprisingly alive. Gingerly she opened her eyes and let out a gasp at what she saw.

Naruto was crouched over her, his left arm covered in glowing orange tattoo markings and twisted across his body so that a particularly complex part of the array was pointed towards the Grimm. The Deathstalker's stinger was barely an inch away from him, straining against the the glowing orange chains that now bound it in place. As Ruby watched the chains began moving under their own power, following a motion from Naruto's other hand, to spread and ensnare the Deathstalker before burying themselves in the ground nearby.

With a grunt Naruto gestured downward with his hand and the chains tightened around the Deathstalker, forcing it to the ground. "Ruby," he began, grunting with the effort, "Could you please stop showing off and pissing off the giant monsters?"

Ruby ducked her head in shame. "I'm not trying to show off," she protested quietly, "I'm trying to show you that I can do this."

Naruto's eyes softened and he reached out with his free hand, squeezing her shoulder. "You're fine," he said reassuringly, "just remember, we're a team now. Don't go rushing of by yourself so much." Ruby gave him a small smile and nodded, taking hold of his hand to pull herself to her feet. The two shared a moment grinning at each other, before Ruby was abruptly ambushed.

The redhead let out a pained squeak as Yang suddenly appeared from behind her, enveloping her in a crushing hug. "I'm so happy you're okay!" Yang gushed, holding Ruby cautiously as she choked and struggled. Naruto could still see a flash of distrust in Yang's eyes as they briefly met his over Ruby's shoulder and he turned away with a snort. The rest of the group came jogging over, many of them casting cautious looks at the beast that Naruto held restrained.

"What do we do now?" Blake asked, Gambol Shroud's pistol form trained on the Deathstalker. Even restrained, the titanic beast was an intimidating sight.

"There's no sense dilly-dallying here," Weiss piped up, having finally caught her breath. "Our objective is right in front of us."

"Whatever we're going to do, we should do it fast." Naruto cut in, his voice laced with strain. "That bird is circling back around, and I can't hold this thing forever."

"Weiss is right," Ruby chimed up in support, "Our objective is to collect a relic and get back to the cliffs. We don't need to fight here." The rest of the group nodded in agreement, those who hadn't already done so grabbing chess pieces from the pedestals.

The strain of holding the Deathstalker down was beginning to show in Naruto's face, the ninja flinching as the Deathstalker made a particularly spirited jerk against its bonds. "Need to practice with these more," Ruby could just hear him muttering, before he spoke up. "Everybody ready?" The assembled trainees dropped down into ready positions, Ren and Pyrrha holding their weapons ready and pointed at the Deathstalker. "Right then. Three, two, one, RUN!"

* * *

**Jutsu Glossary**

**Kongō Fūsa - Adamantine Sealing Chains. **

**Fuinjutsu - A Rank**

**The user summons glowing orange chains formed of chakra. Can be used to create barriers and restrain enemies.**


	5. Chapter 4: Trial by Fire

**A/N: This chapter will wrap up the initiation. Also, Blake finally gets a PoV section meaning that we've finally had a scene from all of the four main PoV characters now!  
**

* * *

There was an odd sense of unity amongst the trainees as they ran full pelt through the forest. So much of the uncertainty and mistrust on both sides that had tainted Naruto's interactions with the Remnant natives had been temporarily driven away by the more pressing issue of the giant Grimm chasing them.

Trainees though they were, pushing past their emotions to truly focus on a life or death situation was something even Ruby had some practise at. The Nevermore had vanished into the sky, presumably stalking them from some hidden vantage point above the clouds, but the Deathstalker had kept close on their trail ever since breaking free from Naruto's chakra chains.

The sounds of gunfire and explosions from behind them suddenly cut off with a yell. Ruby caught his attention with a gesture from the side and the pair of them broke off from the group and stopped running. Ruby span Crescent Rose and slammed the blade into the ground while Naruto dropped into a crouch and began weaving hand-signs.

Working alone as a pair Ruby and Naruto could have easily outran the Deathstalker, but working as a group overall they could only go as fast as their slowest member. The faster members of the group had been dropping back by the pairs to try and slow the beast down as much as they could delaying actions were needed.

Ren and Nora emerged from the trees with weapons drawn and the Deathstalker dangerously close behind them. As soon as the pair were close enough to not get caught in the crossfire Naruto and Ruby began unloading onto the Grimm, the sharp crack as Naruto began to spit out compressed blades of air rivaling the boom of Ruby's sniper-scythe. Neither the air-blades nor Ruby's bullets were penetrating the thick armour of the beast, but they managed to stun and slow it down for a few precious seconds before they too were forced to continue running and rejoin the group.

As Yang and Blake ducked back for their turn distracting the Deathstalker the forest began to open up around them, revealing a much grander set of ruins than the one they had just left. The rib-like remains of some grand hall gave way to an almost bottomless looking chasm sitting straight between them and their objective; a thick fog blocking sight of anything below them. From the center of the chasm rose a tall stone tower, connected to a series of smaller towers by thin bridges. This was all that stood between them and their objective, they were almost there.

As though sensing their growing hopes, the Nevermore dropped from the clouds with an ear-splitting screech and landed atop the largest of the towers, peering down menacingly at them.

Naruto threw himself to the side as a hail of feathers longer than he was tall flew toward them, seeking cover behind a thick stone pillar as the razor sharp projectiles flew past his head and embedded themselves in the ground. The Nevermore screeched and fluffed up its wings, threatening a second barrage if anybody popped their heads up. Yang and Blake came skidding to a halt behind his pillar and not far behind them the Deathstalker was closing in again, pincers snapping at the air as it saw its prey stationary.

Naruto's eyes flicked around the ruins as he tried to figure out some way out from between the two Grimm. He could get himself out of this mess, probably Ruby as well, but aside from Ruby's semblance these students were as far below the average ninja in mobility as they were above normal humans. Somehow he didn't think his plan of clearing the chasm with a single fast jump and running straight up the wall would work well for them.

"Naruto, clones!" He heard his name called and turned to see Ruby pointing toward the Nevermore. He slapped his forehead in frustration; _stupid, stupid!_ Using shadow clones as distractions was one of the most basic uses of the technique, how had he not thought of that?!

Naruto crossed his fingers into a seal and felt a brief moment of light-headedness as thirty clones appeared in a cloud of smoke, chakra rushing from his body to feed the costly constructs. The clones charged forward with a cry and Naruto was suddenly assaulted by the memories of being impaled by razor sharp feathers thirty times over. _Ouch,_ he was definitely going to try and avoid feeling that for real. The Nevermore was 'reloading' now though, which gave him and the others the chance to move forwards.

The bird screeched and took off as they approached, delivering a few half-formed feathers in an easily dodged parting shot. It wasted no time in darting down to claw at them, tearing great gouges in the dirt as it split the group neatly in two.

Naruto sprinted forwards onto one of the thin bridges that spanned the chasm, diving down behind the low walls as the Nevermore swooped down again. From all around him a deafening rain of gunfire erupted as Ruby, Yang and Blake opened up with their respective weapons, the hail of bullets driving the bird away for the moment. The Beacon students might lack the physical ability of a ninja, but their weaponry certainly went a good deal of the way towards making up for it. The strange contraptions were a bit noisy for the taste of most ninja, but undeniably effective. Naruto grinned as Yang fired a particularly loud explosive blast and made a mental note to see about getting himself something like that.

He still had his own options for now though. Naruto pulled out a handful of shuriken and began channeling wind chakra into them. The shuriken took on a white glow, which seemed to expand out into a solid disk when he whipped them through the air.

The glowing projectiles, which could reliably cut through solid stone or steel plate armour, bounced off the Nevermore in a cloud of black feathers that seemed to do little more than annoy the beast. "It's tough," he called out, ducking away as a few feathers ricocheted off the wall he was hiding behind.

"Then keep hammering away at it!" Yang snapped in response, hair whipping about wildly from the recoil as she sent a constant stream of explosive shotgun slugs toward the bird as it flew past. Between the feral look carved into her face and the formidable boom of her weaponry, Naruto was certainly glad that the girl was on his side; for the moment at least. Of all the women to encounter that _really_ disliked him, of course it had to be the one that made him think of a foreign Tsunade or Sakura.

Further down the bridge Ruby was keeping up a constant rain of fire from her rifle and Blake was trying to scale one of the smaller towers, though the latter was forced to abandon the attempt as the Nevermore struck and rammed the tower hard enough to send it crumbling into the abyss.

"Naruto!" Ruby called out, "Can you grab it with those chains?"

"I'll give it a go," he called back, throwing a few more shuriken and then running through the appropriate hand-signs once more. "_Kongō Fūsa!_" he called out, thrusting his left hand toward the sky. Once again the seal beneath his sleeve lit up and glowing orange chains, his chakra given physical form, shot out from his body to chase the bird. Naruto's aim was true and the chains wrapped themselves securely around the Nevermore, binding tightly around its neck.

The bird screeched in anger and gave a mighty flap upward, pulling the chains taut. In response Naruto pulsed his chakra through the stone below him and pulled back, gritting his teeth in pain as the Nevermore threatened to pull his shoulder out of its socket despite the chakra reinforcing the joint.

In the end it was the bridge that gave before Naruto or the bird, the flagstone that he had anchored himself to ripping free. Naruto released the chains just in time to avoid an impromptu flying lesson, dropping back down to the bridge and clutching his sore arm. "Not happening!"

Yang popped her head up over the stone barrier and popped off a few more shots before ducking back down. "That just made it angry, it's coming back around!" she warned.

Naruto peeked his head over the tip of the wall he was hissing behind and grinned as he watched the Nevermore circle back around. Trying to hammer away at the seemingly indestructible bird like this was frustrating, but there was also a part of him that was enjoying the fight. You didn't chose to become a ninja if you truly disliked fighting and it had been a while since Naruto had been able to just let go and throw himself into a fight without having to worry or feel guilty about the lives he might take.

_Hmm,_ half angry and half enjoying the fight; that sounded like the perfect mind-set to break out a particular, furry, secret weapon of his. "This thing's going down," he growled with a grin, casting the bird one more quick glance before breaking cover. Naruto threw a few more wind-enhanced shuriken up at the beast to get its attention and ran out toward a more open area of the bridge.

Taking a deep breath he dropped into a crouch and started to channel his chakra, for the first time since the battle at Hikomi reaching into his mind and loosening the seal that kept the Kyuubi restrained. He had wanted to try and last longer at BEacon before revealing this little ace in the hole, but he hadn't accounted for having to deal with giant monsters. Oh well, purposely hiding his abilities in a fight had always bored Naruto anyway. He began pulling at the beast's chakra while he shaped his own, forming the frame for the shroud that would let him control it.

That was when things went wrong. Just like when he had been unable to heal his wound earlier, when Naruto tried to call upon the power of the Kyuubi nothing happened. As he pulled at the Kyuubi's chakra through the seal he could actually feel the demon pulling against him, denying him as much of its chakra as it could. What the hell was going on?

Without the demonic chakra to fill it, the shroud he had begun to form sucked hungrily at his chakra before spluttering and failing as he managed to cut the connection. The drain sent Naruto to his knees, clutching his stomach in pain and exhaustion. Chakra shrouds weren't something that even someone with as much chakra as Naruto should mess about with without the demon's help.

A screech filled his ears, and he looked up with blurry eyes to see the Nevermore's talons rapidly approaching him.

* * *

Ren was really starting to wish that he hadn't stopped Nora from attacking the Deathstalker earlier. At least then they would have had an entire forest to fight it in, rather than being slowly pushed up against the seemingly bottomless chasm as the scorpion advanced on them.

He darted from cover to cover, ears ringing as he kept a steady rain of bullets flowing from his Stormflowers. He was having disappointingly little effect on the great beast, his automatic pistols too low in calibre to do anything to the thick armour of the ancient Grimm.

Pyrrha wasn't having much more luck with Miló's rifle form either; a Grimm of this size and age wasn't going to be brought low by conventional firearms. Nora, who was behind them both reloading Magnhild, was the only one of them who was really doing any damage to the Deathstalker and she only carried a limited supply of ammo.

The Deathstalker darted forward again and Ren leapt to the side as it shattered the pillar he had been hiding behind. Stone fragments went spinning through the air and one struck his ankle, deflecting off his aura but knocking him down to the ground still. He could hear Nora cry out as the Deathstalker scuttled toward him, but at the last minute before he was impaled the ground around him began to glow white. He had just enough time to look down in confusion before some invisible force yanked him away from the Grimm and into Weiss' arms, who quickly pulled him behind a wall as Pyrrha unleashed a barrage of covering fire.

"Thanks," Ren said quietly, dusting himself off and shivering. That had been a close one, much closer than he would have liked.

"Thank me later," Weiss replied primly, peeking around the wall they were behind. "We need to start doing some damage before it's too late." The chasm behind them was getting worryingly closer every time the Deathstalker forced them to retreat. The heiress sighed and span Myrtenaster's chamber, noticing the Grimm beginning to turn toward them. "I hope the others are having more luck than us."

* * *

Say what you would about the Nevermore, but it was a _great_ way to work off some frustration. Every round that Yang sent up toward the bird - the dust-enhanced slugs filling the air around it with explosions as though she were a human flak cannon - was one less round she was tempted to use on Naruto. Ruby was stuck with the boy, but Yang intended to have _words_ with him as soon as she had the chance. For now though her anger had a much better target; one that was _actively_ trying to kill them, rather than just posing the potential threat of it.

Yang gave the blond ninja an incredulous look as he ran out from behind their cover and stared straight at the approaching bird, his hands clasped in some odd symbol. Confusion quickly turned to shock as the ninja spiked what Yang falsely assumed was his aura, creating a pulse of energy that Yang could actually feel in the bottom of her stomach as light began to flicker across his body and form two tails behind him. She backed up a few steps, raising an arm protectively between Ruby and whatever the hell the ninja was doing.

And then it suddenly stopped. A look of pain flashed over Naruto's face and he fell to his knees, the feeling of power emanating from him disappearing along with the aura shroud. The boy suddenly looked very tired and vulnerable, tiny before the massive talons sailing straight towards his face.

Ruby's cry of dismay was drowned out by the victorious screech of the Nevermore and Yang moved before she really processed what she was doing, throwing herself forward and wrapping her arms around Naruto in mid-air. She twisted and used her momentum to carry them both to the side, the Nevermore's talons coming close enough to ruffle her hair as it tore the bridge apart in lieu of Naruto's face.

Naruto lay on the ground panting as Yang picked herself up, sending a couple of parting shots at the Nevermore as it began to loop around. She could hear the boy swearing rapidly - or at least the tone sounded like swearing - in a language she didn't recognise, glaring at his… stomach? She blinked in confusion before reaching out and slapping him around the back of the head.

"Focus, idiot!" she snarled, ejecting a set of spent shells from Ember Celia with a pop and loading in more of her dwindling supply. The ninja snorted and muttered one last phrase in what she guessed was his native language before nodding. "What the hell just happened?!" she snapped once the Nevermore was clear of them for a few seconds.

"I… overcharged it," he muttered, one hand clenched into a fist over the center of his stomach. Yang gave an unsatisfied snort; she had no clue what had actually happened but had a pretty good idea she was being lied to.

The ninja looked exhausted after that little mishap, great, just what they needed. As Yang pumped her reloaded gauntlets Naruto quickly bit his own thumb, drawing blood which he used to smear a small symbol on his neck; what the hell was he doing? Before Yang could give the clearly delusional boy another slap around the head the blood he had smeared began to glow bright blue, the glow spreading down beneath his clothes to his shoulders before dying out. Once it was through he seemed to hold his head up with a bit more strength, picking himself up to crouch alongside her.

"Naruto! You alright?" a shout came from the side, Ruby hopping neatly over the gap that the Nevermore had made. After receiving and returning the ninja's answering grin Ruby spun Crescent Rose around, slamming the blade into the stone to act as a anchor while she began firing the weapon as fast as it would go. The bullets had little effect, not even deterring the Nevermore from chasing Blake across one of the other bridges.

"It's too tough for bullets, even mine." Ruby griped, watching the beast as Blake nimbly evaded its attention. Even the fearsome .50 calibre bullets that Crescent Rose used were just bouncing off the Nevermore; rounds that were designed to tear their targets apart causing little more than scratches.

Suddenly silver eyes seemed to light up, widening for a moment before Ruby quickly turned to the pair of them. Yang watched her sister with a mixture of optimism and caution. Ruby's ideas in the past tended to either work really well or go completely wrong, with results like their house almost being burnt down; never in-between. "Naruto, how big can you make that wind thing you did earlier?"

"Big." The ninja answered without hesitation, "I've only got one good one left in me though."

Ruby grinned. "Good enough. I'-"

* * *

"-ve got a plan!" Weiss called out, beckoning Ren over to her. They'd been fighting the Deathstalker for far too long now and hammering at it individually had gotten them nowhere at all except closer to the certain death of the cliff. The beast was tough, but it couldn't be invincible; creatures like this were exactly what huntsmen and huntresses existed to kill in the first place.

Weiss had no intention of starting her career as a huntress with a retreat, or god forbid a defeat. Glorious victory was a much more appetising dish.

The heiress gave herself a small smile as Ren listened to her quick summary of the plan, nodded, and then dashed off toward Pyrrha. Ren was the sort of teammate that Weiss could see herself appreciating; quick, quiet, and effective. Much better than many of the other possibilities for third and fourth teammates like the insufferable pair of sisters that were over fighting the Nevermore.

Though it wasn't like she could escape that entirely she supposed, looking at the girl she had been left to inform. Nora was _giggling_ as she rolled under a pillar-destroying backhand from one pincer and knocked the other away with an underhand strike from her explosive hammer. Oh well, she would be a better choice than Ruby; at least she hadn't exploded Weiss. _Yet._ Weiss waited until Pyrrha and Ren distracted the Deathstalker and rushed over toward the girl.

Nora was surprisingly easy to convince, listening to Weiss' plan and then moving off into position with a cheery nod. That only left one thing for Weiss to do.

After taking a moment to steel herself Weiss rushed straight forward toward the Deathstalker, Myrtenaster held at the ready. The beast reacted predictably, thrusting its stinger toward her, and at the last minute she halted and drove the rapier into the ground. Ice blossomed up around her, forming a thick wall and stopping the stinger a bare inch away from her eyes.

Weiss didn't even flinch, simply gesturing behind her to create a glyph on the ground and barking out, "Now!"

Pyrrha responded instantly, using the glyph as a boost to launch herself into the air with Miló extended in spear form. Ren jumped up from the side and met Pyrrha in mid-air and for a second Weiss could see the air distorting as he manipulated pure aura, sending the spartan rocketing down toward the Grimm. Pyrrha slammed into the Deathstalker and Miló was left sticking up, half impaled through the thick armour plates. Pyrrha rolled clear and Weiss formed a second glyph, calling out, "Nora!"

"Got it!" the bubbly girl said, dashing forward with Magnhild in hammer form. She primed an explosion and slammed the hammer straight onto the glyph, the back-blast launching her high into the air. At the apex of her flight Nora released a second explosion to drive her back down and began to spin, slamming Magnhild straight onto Miló and driving all of the considerable momentum she had built up straight onto the thin point. There was a wet crack and the Deathstalker _roared;_ this time not in anger but in pain.

That was Weiss' cue. The ice shattered as the Deathstalker found a burst of strength to rip its tail free, but Weiss was already moving. She backflipped away from the tail and onto a glyph, quickly forming and jumping between three more as she nimbly dodged the incoming attacks.

Her evasive manoeuvrings ended with Weiss landing straight on the Deathstalker's back, one hand grabbing at Miló where it was still stuck in the beast. The weapon had penetrated straight through the Deathstalker's armour and left a break in the chitin about the size of Weiss' hand, more than enough for what she needed.

It was now or never and Weiss braced herself against the Deathstalker, pulling Miló free and throwing the weapon over toward Pyrrha. With her free hand Weiss reached into her pouch behind her and withdrew a crystal of dust, coloured a vivid orange-red. She drove the sharp splinter deep into the black flesh of the Deathstalker and pushed as much aura as she could into it. The crystal began to spark and crackle dangerously and Weiss motioned with her hand, pouring every last drop of Aura she still had into a glyph that launched her away from the beast.

The explosion hit Weiss like a sledgehammer, her speedy exit saving her from the flames but not from the shockwave. She hit the ground hard and rolled for a few feet, coming to rest against a shattered pillar. Slowly she began to pick herself up, a victorious smirk spreading across her face as she beheld her handiwork. The Deathstalker's thick plating had only served to redirect the explosion inside itself, and now there was little more than a smoking stump where its head had once been. Weiss looked proudly at the smouldering corpse, and the shell-shocked hunters beginning to pick themselves up just beyond, for a few more seconds before she slumped to the ground in exhaustion.

* * *

All Grimm species lived ungodly lengths of time and could grow to extreme sizes given enough time to live, even without a formal education on the matter Blake knew that; it was basic knowledge. She also knew that Nevermore were one of the fastest growing species. They started out life not much bigger than a crow and grew rapidly, outweighing all but the largest vulture by the time they had lived a year and begun to grow their mask.

Truth be told, the bird circling above them wasn't _that_ big by Nevermore standards; a hundred years old at most. There were tales of much, _much _larger ones. After all, there was a reason that the largest displays of humanity's might tended to be their airships; and it wasn't _entirely_ Atlas' ego-driven measuring contest with the rest of the world.

Somehow, curiously enough, knowing that there were even bigger Nevermore lurking out in the wilds didn't particularly make Blake feel any better about the one currently blocking out the sun above her head.

Every single one of the instincts that had seen Blake safely through a rough life were screaming at her to run and hide. She took a breath and forced herself to stand her ground, the way her fingers wound in and out of Gambol Shroud's ribbon the only visible sign of her distress. This was the life she had chosen; to atone herself for her sins by dedicating her life and skills to the protection of the innocent; human and faunus alike. The Nevermore was scary, but dealing with the scary things of the world was her job description now.

"You ready?" Ruby asked quietly, sidling up beside her. If nothing else the past minute had shown them that trying to hide from the Nevermore was pointless. Even with all their attempts to be stealthy, the bird might not know where exactly they were but it wasn't straying far from the tower they were hid in.

Blake had been more than a little surprised that out of them all, it had been Ruby who was the first to come up with a workable plan. The plan certainly sounded like something that the excitable girl would come up with based off what Yang had said about her - full of dramatic attacks and risky manoeuvres - but it seemed sound in concept and for something that Ruby had come up with on the spot, while being attacked and with an unfamiliar set of 'tools', Blake was impressed.

"Yeah. No time like the present, right?" she replied quietly, masking her nervousness behind a small smile.

Ruby gave her a bright, confident grin in return and fidgeted with her weapon, dropping the magazine to the ground with a faint clack. Blake could just make out a small black cross etched onto the magazine that had been brought out to replace it and her eyes widened in shock. If that stood for what she thought it did… black dust was some pretty serious firepower to be carrying around.

Ruby had noticed her gaze. "Not got many of these," she said, patting the magazine, "but this seems like a good time." Without further fanfare she hoisted the weapon to her shoulder and began firing. Even by human standards, firing Crescent Rose in a confined space like this was almost deafening. For a faunus like Blake it was practically torturous, each black muzzle-flash accompanied by a blast that physically shook her body, and she found herself wondering how the hell the slight girl before her managed to fire such a large weapon without dislocating her shoulder at the very least.

Thankfully Ruby didn't stick around for long. Once she had got the Nevermore's attention the cloaked girl threw herself out of the tower, using one of the powerful sniper rounds to properly herself upwards to the roof. And that left it Blake's turn. Taking a deep breath, Blake lined up her target and took a running jump straight out of the tower and at the Nevermore as it flew towards Ruby.

Her eyes widened in shock as it noticed her sent her flying away with a single powerful flap. For a moment it seemed at though it was going to change targets to her, but then a sniper round from above ricocheted off its skull. The split second of distraction gave Blake the chance to throw Gambol Shroud back at the tower, the ribbon snapping taunt as she used it to swing around the tower for another try. This time the Nevermore was distracted - trying to rise up through the hail of sniper rounds from above - and she landed neatly on its back, pulling her cleaver-sheath free.

The bird made a spirited attempt to dislodge Blake from its back but she held firm, slashing all the while. The Grimm was old and held the vicious cunning that many of its race developed, but it was still a beast. It was an easy task to use the pain reflex from her strikes to guide it where she wished. She clung on for dear life and steered her mount towards a particular bridge. It took about half of the ten second flight for Blake to completely discount travel-via-Nevermore as a sane or effective form of transport, and she was glad to leap off the beast as soon as the bridge was within jumping distance.

Blake hit the bridge hard, rolled, and immediately sprung into motion. She ignored the angry screeching behind her and ran like her life depended on it, the Nevermore right on her back, as she prayed that the next part of Ruby's plan worked.

* * *

Yang bounced her gauntlets lightly against the stone arch she was hiding behind, teeth worrying at her lower lip. It wasn't in her nature to hang back from the fight like this, especially when the ones still putting themselves in harm's way were her partner and little sister. She wasn't arguing with Ruby's plan - it was better than anything that she had been able to come up with - but the waiting was killing her. Naruto was holding a similar position to her on the other side of the arch, using one of his knives as a mirror to peer around the corner and wincing every now and then.

Suddenly the Nevermore screeched in anger and Yang couldn't resist anymore, peeking her head around the corner. She could just see Ruby positioned atop the tallest tower, a constant stream of black muzzle flashes making her cape ripple with the recoil. The Nevermore veered away from the scythe-wielding girl and began to bank their way, revealing Blake stood atop its back delivering a constant rain of slices. As the Nevermore flailed Blake leapt to safety and hit the bridge running, the Nevermore following right behind her in their direction.

_Hook, line, and sinker_, Yang thought with a grin, pumping her fists to rack fresh shells into Ember Celia. Blake rushed through the arch and she and Naruto sprung out from hiding to face the Nevermore, Naruto taking point slightly.

"You up for this ninja-boy?" Yang asked, taking note of how tired he still seemed despite whatever trick he had pulled to get his second wind. The Nevermore had noticed them and decided that stationary prey was easier, closing in with talons outstretched.

"I'll be fine, just make sure you catch me afterwards." He sniped sarcastically, hands blurring into movement so fast that Yang couldn't even make it out as he began running through a long series of those weird hand-signs. Yang swore that she could almost actually see faint ribbons of blue energy flickering down his arms toward his lungs. Oh hell, if he overcharged whatever he was trying to do again they were screwed.

Before Yang could voice her concern Naruto finished, his hands freezing on one position as he took a deep breath in. "_Fūton: Daitoppa!_"

What came out of Naruto's mouth could only be described as a tornado, condensed and packed down into a solid wall of wind. The cone of wind slammed into the avian Grimm with the force of a truck, stopping it flat for a few seconds before the Nevermore managed to recover; fighting through the winds to slowly approach them.

It never got the chance. Yang's hair began to flash and flicker as she built up all the aura she could, pushing it down into her arm and into one of her Ember Celia. After a few seconds of charging Yang rushed forward and put all her gathered aura into one fiery blast that rocketed past Naruto.

Yang hadn't believed just how flammable Naruto's wind element attacks were until she saw it now. As soon as the blast entered the wind stream it disappeared, and in its place a massive wave of fire was unleashed. The wave of flame rolled towards the Nevermore and engulfed it entirely, the Grimm shrieking in pain. The heat was so intense that even the fire-attuned huntress had to raise an arm to shelter her face from it, and she could see Naruto's hair beginning to smoke before he broke off the attack and staggered backward.

He swayed for a moment before falling backward limply, panting with exhaustion on the ground. Oops, he hadn't been kidding about her catching him. Oh well.

The fire died out and the Nevermore was visible again. The previously untouchable beast now looked like it was barely alive; large patches of feathers burnt straight through to the charred and blackened skin. It hovered unsteadily in mid-air, giving off a faint confused squawk as it tried to get its bearings. And that was when its death bell tolled, in the form of a sharp crack high above it.

The Nevermore looked up just in time to see its death silhouetted by the sun, descending upon it at great speed. While the Nevermore was distracted and weakened Ruby had jumped from the tower high above it and was now returning to earth rapidly, firing Crescent Rose as fast as she could to speed her descent. The Nevermore tried to move but it was too injured to dodge and Ruby's scythe caught it around the neck, the girl herself flying past the Nevermore and dragging it down with her. A trail of rose petals formed behind them as Ruby activated her semblance, heading straight for the bridge.

With a thud that shook the stone beneath Yang's feet the Nevermore slammed into the central bridge, coming to a sudden and brutal stop. Ruby, and the Nevermore's head, kept falling into the abyss. Ruby tumbled uncontrollably away from the decapitated head, and just as it seemed she was going to fall to her death Blake appeared right on time. The black-haired girl swung down on Gambol Shroud's ribbon, catching Ruby under her arm and launching the two of them back toward safety.

There was a stunned silence on the bridge as the girls finally got the chance to admire the enormity of the Nevermore now that it was still. The dissolving corpse took up the entirety of the bridge ahead and any one of them could have comfortably crawled into its windpipe and had plenty of space to move about.

The silence was broken by a hacking coughing sound and Yang turned around to see Naruto being helped to his feet by Ren, though he moved away from the other boy and staggered toward them with his head drooping down. Yang tensed uncomfortably as she remembered exactly who, what, she was looking at and he made the odd noise again. That was until she realised that he was - through what sounded like one hell of a sore throat - laughing. The three stared at him as he finally lifted his head, revealing a wide grin and a twinkle in his eyes.

"That," he croaked, spitting a small wad of blood to the side, "was fucking _awesome."_

* * *

The auditorium filled with a polite applause as Team CRDL moved away from the stage; a mismatched collection of teachers, older students and reporters gathering to watch the ceremonial welcoming of this year's new Beacon trainees.

"Weiss Schnee, Pyrrha Nikos-" The applause briefly became thunderous as Ozpin's voice echoed through the speakers and Beacon's two celebrity students came forward. Weiss stepped up and played the crowd with a practised ease, flashing them a bright smile and a brief curtsy as she took to the stage. The reaction of the crimson-haired girl behind her was more taciturn, but Pyrrha was obviously used to the attention as well. "- Lie Ren and Nora Valkyrie." Ozpin finished, the remaining pair taking to the stage.

Small portraits bearing their images began to arrange themselves on the screen behind Ozpin. "The four of you retrieved the white rook pieces. From this day forward you will work together as Team SNVR," he began, pronouncing the team 'Silver', "Led by… Weiss Schnee." Weiss' smile was radiant and she gave Ozpin another curtsy before turning to lead her team off the stage. Ozpin's eyes slid to the last four students remaining.

"And finally; Ruby Rose, Naruto Uzumaki," Once again a wave of attention spread through the hall as the first pair were named and took to the stage. The clapping was muted though, and almost overpowered by poorly hushed whispers and the popping of camera flashes. Naruto had the feeling that he would be fighting with Weiss for top position in tomorrow's newspaper and kept his face as neutral as he could, fighting to not give them anything to use against him. "- Blake Belladonna and Yang Xiao Long. The four of you retrieved the white knight pieces. From this day forward you will work together as Team RUBY, led by… Ruby Rose."

The applause from the audience finally picked up as Beacon's youngest huntress stood there with a stunned smile on her face, until a yellow blur raced past Naruto and grabbed her in a bone crushing hug. Naruto gave the pair a small smile and patted Ruby's back as the redhead tried to pry herself free from Yang's deadly embrace.

As Team RUBY stepped away from the stage Naruto could swear he felt Ozpin's eyes lingering on him, and he just heard the man mutter something as he stepped away from the microphone.

"It looks like this will be an interesting year."

* * *

**A/N: And that's the initiation! It's been fun to write, but I'm also now looking forwards to bringing in more of the original elements I've got planned. My plan isn't to disregard canon entirely with this story, but to pick and choose the bits which work and are appropriate and meld them into the original story I've cooked up. **

**As an aside, wow! In just four chapters and a little less than three weeks this has gotten forty reviews and gone over the hundred favorite milestone (Closer to a hundred and fifty now)! You guys rock!**

**Jutsu Glossary:  
**

**Fūton: Daitoppa - Wind Release: Great Breakthrough**

**Ninjutsu - C Class**

** The user takes a deep breath and then releases a conical blast of wind from their mouth. Can vary greatly in size and intensity depending on how much chakra is used. **

**Fūton: Mikazuki no Ha - Wind Release: Crescent Blade  
**

**Ninjutsu - C Class**

** The user takes a deep breath and compresses the air inside their mouth, releasing it as one big or several small crescent shaped blades.  
**


	6. Chapter 5: The First Day

**A/N: And at last, I'm back with an update! Between the end of my final year of university doing its best to kill me and stress from job-hunting afterwards its been a while since I've had time to update. Uni is over now though and I'm settling into the routine of job-hunting, which means that with plenty of free time and a more reliable schedule, regular updates can continue. I've not written in quite a while, so forgive me if I'm bit rusty for this chapter.**

* * *

Naruto slept surprisingly soundly considering his surroundings, though that still meant that his sleep was light, and disturbed several times by some small movement or noise.

Ninja were notoriously paranoid when outside their home village, something that was especially true when it came to sleeping. After all, the natural enemy of a ninja was another ninja, and all ninja knew that sleep was the easiest time to strike a target. Ninja used various chakra techniques to enhance their senses or perceive the world, but in the end all this watchfulness also made their vulnerability while sleeping particularly noticeable.

As a result, many ninja became habitually light sleepers in anything other than completely comfortable environments. The common ninja practice of sleeping close enough together that you could touch your teammates was as much about getting comfortable enough to actually sleep than it was about safety. Between the unfamiliar surroundings, unfamiliar bed and unfamiliar people sleeping so close to him, it was a wonder that Naruto had gotten any sleep at all this first night.

So, when something began moving suspiciously close to Naruto just after the sun had begun to tickle at his eyelids, making _just_ enough noise to disturb him, he moved instantly and unconsciously. Before he had even awoken, one hand snapped out to pluck the shining silver whistle from between Ruby's lips before she could even blow it, making the girl who had been leaning over him flinch back with a quiet _eep_. A moment later, Naruto's mind caught up with his body and he let himself relax, the tension bleeding from his muscles as he very carefully let go of the kunai hidden beneath his pillow.

Yawning widely, Naruto rubbed the sleep from his eyes and glanced around the room, still dimly lit with only the tiniest bit of sunlight streaming through the window. He gave a groan of dismay when he caught sight of the clock sitting on one of the tables. It was fairly simple by Vale standards - a sheet of transparent glass with dimly lit numbers imposed on it rising from a semi-circle of metal. Back in Naruto's homeland, such a device would have sold for a fortune and taken pride of place in some noble's collection. Here, it was simply thrown carelessly on a table in a student dorm room.

This sharp reminder of the differences between Naruto's world and this one showed the current time as _far-too-damn-early_, the red numbers abrasively bright in the gloom. What the hell was Ruby doing up and dressed so early? The way that she seemed to be vibrating with excitement as she waited for him to wake up probably had something to do with it.

Apparently, Ruby wasn't the only one awake so early. Blake's bed was empty, but the faint patter of the shower drifting through the door to their connected bathroom gave some clue where she was. All that could be seen of Yang was a mound of blonde hair just visible above the covers of her bed, moving in time with the quiet snores and murmurs coming from the girl.

Naruto's eyes drifted from Yang to the whistle in his hands, and his eyes brightened mischievously. He waved to get Ruby's attention and then tossed her the whistle, gesturing to Yang with a grin. Ruby popped the whistle in her mouth and gave him a mock salute, gently sneaking over towards her sister with exaggerated care. Carefully, she leaned down with the whistle just a few inches from Yang's ear and took a deep breath, while Naruto just leaned back and waited for the fireworks.

* * *

Across the hall, all was quiet in Team SNVR's room. At this hour even Nora, inexhaustible ball of energy that she usually was, was still asleep with a pillow crushed in her frighteningly strong grasp. Weiss was sleeping peacefully, her face graceful and serene as she enjoyed some well deserved beauty sleep.

Or, at least, Weiss _had_ been sleeping. She found herself rudely torn back into the waking world when the room across the hall burst into a cacophony of noise. A loud, piercing whistle was followed up by a scream, a thud as someone fell from a bed and - just when Weiss thought it couldn't possibly get any louder - what sounded like a gunshot of all things! Nora murmured something about pancakes and snuggled further into her bed, but Weiss and the remaining members of Team SNVR were awoken.

Jumping out of bed with a snarl, Weiss stormed across the hallway and threw open the door to Team RWBY's dorm, her mouth dropping open in shock at what she saw. Yang - clad in only boyshorts, a skimpy tank top and for some reason her gauntlets - lay sprawled half-tangled in her sheets, one smoking Ember Celia pointed at an equally undressed Naruto who had taken cover behind his bed. A large bullet hole had been gouged into the wall behind him at head height.

"- hell did you shoot at me for?" he was shouting as she entered the room, "Ruby was the one with the whistle."

"I'm not gonna shoot my sister!"

"Then don't shoot _anyone_ you crazy bi-"

"What in the world is going on in here? Don't you realise people are trying to sleep?" Weiss interrupted, her shrill screech making the entire room wince and turn towards her.

"I, well, we uh, I-" Ruby began to splutter and try to explain, looking so panicked and pathetic that after a few seconds, Weiss took pity on her and cut her off.

"No, I don't even want to hear your attempt at an excuse. _I _am going back to sleep, if any of you dolts wake me up again…" she let the sentence trail off threateningly before spinning on her heel, slamming the door behind her.

Still fuming, the heiress returned to her own room and slipped back into her bed, trying to ignore the now slightly quieter arguing still drifting out from the other room and go back to sleep. For neither the first nor the last time, Weiss sent a silent thanks to the heavens that she had ended up in a _normal_ team.

"Mmmm… No! Bad pancakes… not allowed to run." Nora mumbled, chewing on her pillow.

Normal-_er._

* * *

"Ugh, how can you guys stand wearing clothes like this? I can barely move." Naruto griped, tugging at the collar of his uniform as he stepped out of the bathroom.

By the time Ruby and Blake had managed to break up the argument between Naruto and Yang, the sun was beginning to rise and it was time for them all to start getting ready for the day. Thankfully Yang seemed to be in a better, less shooty, mood after a long shower, though Ruby still noticed her giving Naruto distrustful glances every now and then as she sat and combed her hair into shape.

"You'll get used to it. At least we only have to wear it for classes." Ruby reassured him. It was obvious just from looking at him that what Naruto normally wore was cut a lot looser than their clothing.

"Hmph. At least you three don't have to wear the noose." Naruto grumbled, tugging at the offending article of clothing. Naruto had almost throttled himself earlier putting his tie on, and in the end Blake had needed to fasten the unfamiliar garment for him.

Yang snorted, "It's just a tie. Suck it up, wuss."

The tone of Yang's voice made Ruby frown. Teasing and poking fun were just part of how Yang interacted with people, Ruby had gotten used to that long ago, but she seemed to be a lot more caustic about it with Naruto. The ninja had noticed too, and almost being shot in the face didn't seem to have put him in a particularly good mood this morning. Seeing Naruto's expression begin to sour, Ruby made a mental note to ask Yang about it later and quickly cut in before the argument could start up again.

"Anyways! Now that everyone is ready we can officially begin with our first order of business!"

Yang caught on quickly and brightened up. "Decorating!" she chirped, holding up the pile of stuff she had dumped out of her suitcase the night before.

The room quickly became a whirlwind of motion as the four teenagers set about making the space they were going to live in for the next four years their own. Yang set about decorating one of the walls with an "Achieve Men" poster, while Ruby decorated the other wall with a poster showing the internal workings of an AK-130 combat android, conveniently covering the bullet hole Yang had made earlier. While they were seeing to the walls, Naruto and Blake moved the furniture about., Blake filled much of their bookcases with a large collection of books - cleverly hiding some of her more… risque books behind smaller ones when the others weren't looking - while Naruto claimed one of the desks and filled it with a wide range of scrolls, papers, inks and brushes alongside a collection of weapon oils, whetstones and other tools that even Ruby thought a bit excessive.

Eventually, they had finished and stepped back to admire their work. The walls were nicely decorated, the furniture stocked with their belongings and put into place, and the beds… piled haphazardly in the centre of the room.

"This, isn't going to work." Naruto commented.

"Hmm." Ruby propped her hand under her chin and gazed at the pile of beds, cogs turning in her head until- "I've got it!" she exclaimed, "Bunk beds!"

She turned proudly to the other three and found them briefly huddling their heads together and murmuring. After a few seconds Ruby received three simultaneous thumbs-ups and she let out a cheer that was mimicked by her teammates, "Onwards, Team RUBY!"

The room once again was filled with noise and motion as the team set about building the beds. Outside the room, passing students stopped and stared in horror at the sounds that were emanating from behind the door as Team RUBY set about their task. They somehow managed to emulate the sounds of an entire construction site and beyond, with one freshman later claiming that he had even heard the growling and snarling of a Grimm through the door (Actually, Yang and Naruto had gotten into yet another scuffle, when Naruto accidentally knocked down part of her and Blake's bunk bed). A passing Weiss Schnee dropped her head into her hands in despair at the thought of living across the hall from Team RUBY for four years, before shuddering and continuing on to class with the rest of SNVR as quickly as she could.

Inside the room, Team RUBY was standing back to admire their work. Yang and Blake had constructed supports for their beds out of the numerous books that Blake had brought with her, sacrificing some of the lesser tomes to produce something that was impressively sturdy and stable considering what it was made out of. It would have looked impressive if it hadn't been across the room from Ruby and Naruto's creation.

"I'm pretty sure using witchcraft is cheating." Yang grumbled, arms crossed as she looked it over. Naruto rolled his eyes.

Ruby's bed currently appeared to be floating neatly above Naruto's bed, shaking slightly as the ninja crouched underneath it, tweakingthe seals he had carved onto the underside with a chisel. In fact, the bed was actually stuck to the wall with a chakra current from a structural support seal, but Naruto hadn't explained much of what he was doing once Ruby had helped him get everything in place.

"Is that safe?" Blake questioned uncertainly, reaching out gingerly to poke the bed as though she expected it to fall and crush Naruto at the slightest touch.

The ninja in question just grinned. "Yep, just need to drag a couple of goats up here to sacrifice and it's done." He quipped, rolling his eyes at Yang who gave a small, amused snort. Ruby gasped and he laughed at her horrified expression, waving his hands placating. "Just joking. This is sealing, not witchcraft."

Naruto then bit his thumb and used the newly flowing blood to sketch a small symbol across the carvings. A hand symbol later and the whole thing began to glow a bright blue, the faint smell of burning wood reaching Ruby's nose before the glow faded and the symbols stabilised.

"Suuurrree, not witchcraft at all. Just needs a blood sacrifice to make it work," Yang remarked.

"There we go." Naruto said happily, slapping the now stable bed. "One bunk bed that _isn't_ going to collapse and kill me in the middle of the night, done." he finished with a grin towards Blake, who gulped and glanced uncertainly at her own bottom bunk.

"Objective complete!" Ruby cheered, dropping herself down onto Naruto's bed and opening her binder up. "Next up iiiiiiiiss-" Ruby seemed to deflate, and lost some of her cheer, "-classes."

The redhead sighed and thumbed through her binder, looking at the timetable they had been given yesterday. "Now, we have a few classes together today. At nine we have-"

Across the room, Blake perked up, "Wait, did you say nine?"

"Yup, why?"

In response, Blake just pointed to the clock, whose cheery red numbers proclaimed the time to be '8:55'. As though mocking them, the clock moved up to '8:56' with a faint beep, and Ruby gave a cry of dismay.

"We're gonna be late! To class!" she cried, darting for the door with the rest of the team close behind her.

* * *

When Beacon had been described to Naruto as an academy that trained huntsmen, powerful warriors that battled against soulless monsters that sought to destroy all of humanity, he had expected classes to be exciting. Classes on the Grimm and how to hunt them, classes on combat, classes on the strange jutsu that these foreigners used and the 'Dust' material that fuelled it. Naruto had been vaguely hopeful that he would be able to enjoy some of the hands-on, practical, learning that actually worked for him.

Unfortunately, their first class was… a bit of a disappointment.

"-and so in the early spring of the year 26AW a clash between faunus and human residents of the Jonestown colony occurred when militant elements staged an attack on the local-"

History. Of all the things, the first class that Naruto had been treated to in his Beacon education was _history_. It was all he could do to suppress the traumatic flashbacks to his days in the academy, trying (and failing) to write reports about people and places that he cared nothing about.

To be fair, the subject - the series of conflicts between Remnant's humans and the faunus, the animalistic race that shared this land alongside them, that eventually led to the Faunus Rights Revolution - was interesting. Or, it would have been if Naruto could actually follow along with the lecture.

Bartholomew Oobleck was a messily dressed, high-strung looking fellow with a frightening shock of green hair. The man seemed to have a steaming cup of coffee permanently glued to his hand, leaving it only occasionally to be refilled, and it showed. As he spoke, he darted around the classroom with the quick, spastic movements of someone who had consumed _far_ too much caffeine, and his speech itself was a rapid-fire barrage of words that hardly ever seemed to slow down or pause for breath.

Naruto's Valian was good considering how short a time he had spent speaking it - ninja lessons in memorisation techniques were useful for more than just scouting and spying - but there was no chance of him understanding anything with the sheer speed that Oobleck spoke at; even many of the native born Vale students seemed to be having trouble keeping up with him. For Naruto, the words of Oobleck's speech just blurred together into one big, confusing mess that he had no time to mentally translate.

The textbook for the class wasn't much help either. Naruto had picked up _speaking_ Valian fairly quickly, but the writing, its characters so infuriatingly different from the ones he was used to, still eluded him for the most part. He could pick his way through text slowly when he concentrated but when it came to trying to keep up with Oobleck, the book did little more than mock him with its presence.

By ten minutes in Naruto had given up, doodling seal designs and theories on what had been his notes while looking at Oobleck just enough to give the impression that he was actually paying attention. Naruto was halfway through sketching out a new design for a portable forcefield seal that might _not_ explode in his face this time, when someone nudged him.

Naruto glanced to the side. After the arguing that morning, Team RUBY had taken up seats along one of the rows with Naruto at one end, Yang at the other and Blake and Ruby keeping the peace in the middle. To his direct left, Ruby was holding up a piece of paper for him to see.

He couldn't quite hold back a snicker as he took in the drawing that decorated the paper, coupled with Ruby's proud grin. Ruby had drawn a crude caricature of Oobleck onto the paper, a preposterously enlarged coffee cup dwarfing a stick-thin body. A stream of 'Bla's emerged from the man's mouth and spiralled around the page, passing over the head of a chibi Ruby sleeping at her desk.

Naruto snickered and gave her a subtle thumbs up, to which Ruby beamed. She flipped the paper around, getting a giggle from Yang and a faint, almost grudging smirk from Blake. In the row behind them, Weiss paused from her note-taking to give a sniff of disapproval.

It soon enough became apparent that as long as they were quiet, Oobleck seemed to take no notice of almost everything they did. Armed with this knowledge, and a hefty amount of boredom, Naruto and Ruby's antics slowly grew more and more ridiculous as Tic-tac-toe, connect the dots and other paper-based games soon ceased to amuse them. As their antis got harder to ignore, a certain white-haired heiress became more and more incensed with their actions.

Eventually, Ruby and Naruto were just blatantly playing paper-football along their desk. Ruby was winning, partially because Naruto was not-so-subtly aiming most of his shots down the table at Yang, bouncing several of them off her nose. Seeing that Ruby was happy, Yang seemed to be tolerating the assaults with only _minor_ threatening gestures in Naruto's direction.

Unfortunately their fun ended when Ruby put a bit too much force into one of her flicks, bouncing the paper off Naruto's hand and up towards Weiss. Unlike Yang, when the paper bounced lightly off her cheek Weiss snapped her head towards them with a caustic glare.

"Will you childish dolts _stop it_?" she hissed at Ruby, who yelped in shock.

"_Ahem_."

Weiss froze as Oobleck suddenly cleared his throat violently, pausing in his lecture to peer upwards at her. "Something to share with the rest of the class, Miss Schnee?"

Naruto was honestly impressed at how deep a shade of red the formerly pale girl went, though whether from embarrassment or rage he couldn't quite tell, when the professor turned his attention onto her.

"I, um, no sir," she spluttered.

Oobleck peered upwards, "Very well. Do pay attention, these are important matters. Those who fail to learn from history are destined to repeat it. See me after class."

The rest of the class continued uneventfully, if you didn't count Weiss trying to set him and Ruby on fire with her eyes and grinding her teeth so hard that Naruto could actually hear it. Naruto had made live seals under much more distracting conditions though, so it wasn't too hard to ignore her and go back to drawing his seal designs. Ruby, on the other hand, spent the rest of the class hunched in on herself, quietly taking notes.

The last ten minutes of the class dragged by painfully slowly, even with his seals to keep Naruto occupied. It seemed that he wasn't the only one feeling cooped up either. When the bell finally rang the entire class aside from Weiss shot out of their seats and made for the door, a veritable tidal-wave of humanity sweeping Team RUBY up and depositing them in the hall outside.

"Ahh man, I thought that was never going to end," Yang groaned.

"It wasn't that bad," Blake protested with a frown, though she was stretching out kinks and sore joints as much as the rest of them.

"I'm gonna have to agree with Yang, that sucked," Naruto piped up, drawing a conflicted look from the named girl.

There was a moment of silence and, as one, the three turned to look at Ruby. Their redheaded leader was gazing off into space, her attention taken up either by a particularly ugly painting of a tree, or something within her mind. After a few seconds she noticed them staring at her and gave a start.

"Oh! Uh, yeah, class sucks," she mumbled, shuffling her feet nervously. "Umm, why don't you guys go on ahead? I'm gonna stay here and, uh, say sorry to Weiss."

Yang frowned and gave the classroom door a cautious glance, "You sure? Ice Queen seemed preeetty pis-" she managed to say before being interrupted by an elbow to the ribs from Blake.

"Sure Ruby, we'll see you later," the bow-wearing girl said, dragging Yang with her. Naruto lightly tapped his knuckles against Ruby's arm and followed suite, the sound of him and Yang beginning to bicker again soon filtering down the hallway as they disappeared from view.

Ruby was left leaning against the wall, tapping her heel nervously against the stone as she waited for Weiss to come out of the classroom. She wasn't waiting for long though before the door was thrown open, and a green blur raced out and down the hallway, leaving her hair flapping in the breeze. The blur was followed shortly by a fuming Weiss, who somehow managed to look even more sour when she caught sight of Ruby.

"Weiss! I, I'm sor-" Ruby began to stammer.

"No!" Weiss snapped, getting right up in Ruby's face in a flash of angry movement, "I don't want to hear it."

With a timid _meep_, Ruby pressed herself back against the wall in an attempt to put any shred of distance between her and the angry heiress.

Without any opposition, Weiss continued in her rant, "Acting like a child! Goofing off in class! Leaving _me_ to take the blame for _your_ actions! You're supposed to be a leader, and all you've been so far is a nuisance!"

That stung, and finally got Ruby to try and defend herself, "H-hey, that's not fair!"

"Fair?" Weiss all but shouted, her nose barely an inch away from Ruby's, "What isn't fair is that _you_ got chosen to be a leader. You've done _nothing_ to earn your position! Back in the forest, you acted like a child, and you've only continued to do so!" She finally backed off a little bit and stopped shouting, though her voice was no less venomous. "Frankly, I feel insulted that I'm expected to consider someone like you an equal. Ozpin made a mistake."

With that final barb, Weiss turned on her heel and stormed off down the hallway, leaving Ruby to slide down the wall and to the floor with a despairing sigh and hug her arms around her knees. She almost missed the second 'humph' Weiss gave as she was walking away, until she heard the footsteps of the one it was directed at approaching her, and looked up with teary eyes to see Naruto.

"Uh, hey," he called, glancing behind him at Weiss' disappearing figure.

"Hey," Ruby said, her voice quiet, "You heard that?"

Naruto nodded, "Most of it, yeah." With a sigh he dropped down, sitting against the wall besides Ruby. "You alright?"

There was a long moment of silence, punctuated by Ruby's lack of an answer, "Do- do you think she's right? Did Ozpin make a mistake?" she eventually asked.

This time it was Naruto who didn't answer for a while, staring off into space with vacant eyes. "Being a leader isn't just glory and recognition. You have to motivate your teammates, and bear the burdens that we face heavier than anyone else. When you command, you take the lives of those under you into your hands, and if you mess up, people can get hurt, or even killed."

Ruby shrank in on herself even more, the sudden weight of responsibility hitting her like a hammer. "I, maybe she's right then. Maybe I should go tell Ozpin I'm not cut out for this. I don't want to get anyone killed because I wasn't good enough." The thought of causing anyone's death because of a mistake that she made was terrifying to her. No amount of pride at being named leader was worth that.

She flinched when Naruto's hand suddenly clapped down on her shoulder, giving her a comforting squeeze, "And that's why Ozpin didn't make a mistake," he said confidently.

"What?" Ruby asked, turning to give Naruto a blank look.

"You care about people, you value your friends over your leadership. You're not the sort of person who would put their team at risk for personal glory," he paused for a moment, gaze dropping down to his own hands, "or because you got angry. Ozpin didn't choose you because he thought you're already a great leader, he chose you because you have the attitude, the potential, to be one."

Ruby's eyes were beginning to brighten as she stared at Naruto, "You really think so?"

"Yup." Naruto's words were filled with confidence. "Did you know that the Nevermore we fought only had one eye?"

"Uhh no, I didn't really look at its eyes that closely. Why?" Ruby asked, confused by the abrupt change of topic.

Naruto nodded, "I did a big of digging after the initiation. Ovar the One-Eyed it was called. That Nevermore was eighty years old, and it had fifty recorded kills under its belt. And we, a bunch of rookies not even past our initiation, killed it following your lead."

Wow, Ruby'd had no idea that the Nevermore had been that old, or that fearsome. It had just seemed like a big, angry bird at the time. She turned and gave Naruto a watery smile, understanding what he was getting at.

"You care about your team, you've got a quick mind, you're just generally awesome, and, for the stuff you don't know about," he cast his arms around the hallway dramatically as Ruby giggled, "we're in a school. You have a bunch of extra classes compared to the rest of us covering leader stuff don't you?"

"Ugh, don't remind me," Ruby muttered, remembering how busy her schedule got later in the week compared to the rest of the team.

"So, you'll learn what you don't know." Naruto finished with a grin, rising to his feet. "My godfather told me once, 'It's a hell of a lot easier to beat the correct skills into someone, than it is the correct attitude,' I'd take you over _Yuki-onna_ any day."

He reached a hand down to her and she took it, pulling herself to her feet. "I'll do my best in my classes and I'll become a great leader and keep you all safe!" she declared enthusiastically, pumping her fist.

"That's more like it." Naruto gave her a smile before glancing over her shoulder. "Uhh, Ruby, when's our next class?"

"Uhhhhh," Ruby tried to think back to their timetable, "quarter past eleven I think, why?"

Naruto just pointed to the clock hanging from the wall behind her, showing the time as ten past eleven. "Time to run again," he sighed.

* * *

Several hours later, after a day chock full of classes and daunting rushes through packed hallways, Team RUBY was finally getting the chance to relax and have something to eat. Unfortunately, their relaxation time was being interrupted.

It had started earlier in the day, while the were going from class to class. Wherever Team RUBY went, they had been followed by a steady stream of negative attention, directed at one member in particular; Naruto.

At first, it had been subtle, occasional faint whispers and glances as they made their way between classrooms, but as the day had wore on and the the hallways became busier it had gotten worse and worse. Even though she had only just met him, Naruto seemed nice to Ruby and it rankled her to see people treating her partner so poorly. As a result, Ruby spent much of the day between classes glaring down the various upperclassmen who she noticed making comments (all the while steadfastly ignoring Yang's squees over how cute her angry face looked).

By the time they sat down to eat dinner in the crowded cafeteria, people were openly staring and muttering loud enough for the sound to carry over to the team. Ruby couldn't make out exactly what they were saying, but certain words featured strongly enough to reach her ears; 'foreigner','ninja' and 'murderers' amongst them.

It almost seemed like the ninja was either ignoring or not noticing most of it, too caught up with his scroll. Ruby had half known that Naruto came from a place much less developed than theirs, but it hadn't really hit home until she had seen the look of wonder on his face when Blake showed him how to open and start his scroll.

Despite his enthralment with the advanced device, Ruby was close enough to see the way Naruto's face subtly hardened, and his hands tightened around the scroll when a particularly obvious insult drifted his way across the room. She was doing her best to distract Naruto from the rest of the room, excitedly pointing out the myriad of features that their scrolls had. While Ruby's technological fanaticism was mainly directed at weaponry, she had enough of an interest in the sort of technology their scrolls used that Naruto's excitement at discovering the technology fed her own at showing it to him.

"And look here, if you press this it can take photos!" she chirped, leaning over from her seat next to him to tap at the transparent screen. After a few taps, the screen turned even more transparent than normal, with a faint aiming overlay. Ruby pointed the scroll at Blake and Yang across the table. Blake frowned at her and buried her head into the book she was reading while Yang grinned and stuck her tongue out at the scroll, pulling an eyelid down with one finger. The scroll took the photo with a faint click and Ruby angled it back so that Naruto could see.

"Whoa, that's cool. Useful too," he said wonderingly, zooming in and out on the picture and marvelling at the detail. "Cameras back in Konoha are these massive things, and they take ages to develop the pictures."

It was a similar story with much else the scroll could do; The basic model scrolls they were given for Beacon were phone, camera, GPS, miniature computer and PDA all rolled into one with full access to the Vale Communications Network, or vNet. The vast majority of these features either just plain weren't available in Naruto's home, or only existed in a far more primitive form. Naruto looked like he could hardly comprehend how much such a small device could do so much.

Naruto was still poking over the image. "So, I can just take this photo and send it so someone over that electronic m-"

"Email. Unless you want to sound like you're seventy," Ruby interrupted with a giggle and a nod, "and yup. You can send it to anyone in Vale over the vNet from here. If you go to the CCT you can even send messages to people in other kingdoms! It's not just pictures and text either. You can send files and video and even real time video calls while we're in areas with good network and if these are the ScR-3 models which I think they are we can even play multi-player games between them and-"

Naruto's eyes looked to be getting crossed as Ruby slowly transitioned into a breathless rant about all the cool things their scrolls could do, the rapid-fire stream of information leaving him dazed and confused. Thankfully he was 'saved by the bell', though in this case the bell was his scroll. As Ruby was continuing her rant, she was interrupted by the high-pitched chime of the default message alert as a bright orange envelope popped up on Naruto's screen.

Ruby lurked curiously over Naruto's shoulder as he prodded at the message. There was no description or title attached to it, just a name that made Ruby cast a sharp glance down the table. Cardin Winchester and the rest of Team CRDL were some of the only first year students who seemed to be joining the upperclassmen in harassing Naruto, and the way they were snickering and giving Naruto non-too kind looks from down the table gave her a bad feeling about the message.

With a quick prod, Naruto opened the message and the screen flashed black as the video player opened itself and played the attached file. Shaky, low resolution footage of a forest with unnaturally large trees filled the screen, with the Vale News Network emblem overlaid in the bottom left corner. A man dressed in casual clothing beneath a kevlar vest was walking slowly through the forest with a blocky, black assault rifle cradled in his arms, while the cameraman followed behind him.

Across the table Ruby saw Yang's face go pale, and she leaned forwards. "Naruto, maybe you shouldn-"

Before Yang had time to finish, or Ruby had time to really process how odd it was she had called Naruto by his name rather than 'Uzumaki' or 'ninja-boy' as she had done most of the day until now, the calm air inside the video was shattered.

Some small projectile flew from the trees towards the man, deflecting off some sort of shielding semblance and exploding in a cloud of smoke and fire that shook the camera. In its wake an oddly dressed man - clad in midnight-blue clothing with a bulky olive vest - dashed from the tree-line towards the rifleman with a knife held ready. The newcomer looked to move almost as quickly as Ruby, quick enough that the camera couldn't render his movement properly, but the riflemen turned just in time to fire a quick burst that hit him straight in the chest.

There was no flash of aura protecting the attacker, just a spray of blood as he fell to the ground and began twitching violently. Ruby stifled a gasp of horror as the camera zoomed his way, and the rifleman sauntered over and levelled his gun once more. He called out something aimed behind the camera with a laugh before firing a second burst into the downed man, and the video abruptly cut out on a freeze frame. The camera was close enough for Ruby to make out the blood dripping from the man's mouth, and the odd metal headband that he wore.

Her heart skipped a beat, and she slowly looked away from the scroll over to Naruto. Even in his school uniform he was still wearing his own headband, a slab of metal that was identical to the olive-vested man's.

Naruto's face was blank, but the calm of his expression was painfully forced. His usually tanned skin had gone pale, his hands were so tight around the scroll it looked like it might shatter, and his jaws was set in a firm line where his teeth clenched together. Naruto's eyes showed the things that he was holding back from his face, a mixture of sadness and rage that she would have found terrifying if it wasn't directed down the table at Team CRDL.

"Ruby," he began, his voice sending a chill down her spine despite the seeming calm of it, "We're free for the day now right?"

"Umm, yeah. We're just supposed to work on our homework together," she confirmed, nodding timidly.

The scroll fell to the table, forgotten along with Naruto's food, as he swiftly stood up. "Right. I'm going somewhere quieter-" a snicker from CRDL's direction caught his attention and he paused, visibly trying to keep his temper, "-before someone gets hurt," he finished darkly. With a final glare towards CRDL he turned and swiftly left the room, leaving the rest of the team watching him go helplessly.

* * *

Adam had always said that humans had no idea what they were missing by having such weak senses of smell and, even long after leaving him and the White Fang, Blake still found herself agreeing with him. Someone's scent could tell so much about them, all the most common points of their life blending together into a scent that was distinctive to each individual.

Naruto's scent was rather interesting, she couldn't help but muse as she tracked her missing teammate through Beacon's hallways and courtyards. From the rumours and worries circulating around Beacon like wildfire, she might have expected the ninja to stink of blood and death, but not so. The faint tang of old blood _was_ there, just as it was for many of the warriors around Beacon, herself included, but it was almost entirely overpowered in Naruto's scent.

Instead, Naruto's scent made her think most of trees in the spring, leaves and sap, of an odd spicy smell - a food perhaps? - that made her nose twitch with displeasure, of metal and oil, of parchment and ink, and curiously enough of foxes. The last part was perhaps the most confusing; despite the whisker shaped marks on his cheeks she could tell that Naruto wasn't a faunus, so she had no idea why he would smell so strongly of the elusive animals.

Altogether, it was a rather pleasant scent, and one distinctive enough to easily pick out in the crowded hallways. Blake had been rather lucky there; between Naruto, Ruby's strong scent of roses and weapon oil, and the faint scent of burning that Yang's overpowering shampoo couldn't quite drown out, her teammates were all relatively easy to track by nose. If only she didn't have to hide that she was doing so.

The frustration that welled up at that thought was also part of why she was here in the first place. Even in a progressive place like Beacon, faunus still suffered discrimination and it seemed that now extended towards Naruto. Even here, it was safer for her to hide her faunus heritage. Naruto didn't have that choice - even if he didn't insist on proudly displaying the symbol of his people, his accent and facial structure were very distinctive - and that had drummed up some sympathy for him within her.

Blake was torn from her thoughts when she abruptly found herself at her destination, much earlier than she had expected. Based on what she had seen of Naruto so far, she had half expected him to be working his frustrations out at the gym or out in the forest. Instead, he had led her to the massive, ornate building that housed Beacon's library.

Shrugging, she pushed open the doors and was forced to pause for a moment as the scent of the library hit her like a brick wall. With their enhanced senses, many faunus had a tendency to assign more emotional meaning to smells than humans did, and Blake was no exception. Books were, and had always been, a source of comfort for her, and the thick, musty smell of them drifted out of the door and wrapped itself around her like an old blanket.

The faunus allowed herself a few seconds to close her eyes and enjoy the scent before she pressed on, subtly scrunching her nose as she regained Naruto's scent.

The trail quickly took her of the beaten path and deep into the towering stacks of the library. Soon enough, Blake found herself leaving behind the bright, modernised study halls for the older section of the building that many of the older students either favoured for the quiet, or had to dive into in search of obscure books. The bright dust lights of the main halls gave way to older, filament style bulbs, and in some places even candles or gas-lamps.

By the time she found Naruto, the building had almost become a warren of tight tunnels formed by the towering bookcases, and Blake was getting an appreciation for the despair with which many of the older students spoke when they had to venture here to find some piece of mandatory reading. This was difficult enough even with a scent trail to follow!

The ninja himself, she found in a small clearing in a corner of the building, a table and several comfy chairs crammed into a cosy space lit only by a candelabra on the table and a single small window set high into the wall. He was bent close over a book with his face scrunched up in concentration, muttering something to himself that Blake couldn't quite make out until she quietly moved closer.

"-Stormed. The. Keep. This. Ins- incident. Was. Known. As. The. Summer. Ins, ins- uh." It took Blake a second to realise that he was muttering the book's content to himself, pronouncing each word with the sort of slow clarity a child might.

"Insurrection," she finished quietly from behind him. Naruto dropped the book with a start and turned around, flushing bright red as he realised that he wasn't alone.

Blake inclined her head and sat down in one of the chairs, letting out a small, satisfied sound as she sank deeply into the old cushion. Naruto had one hand scratching the back of his head in a nervous gesture, and his cheeks were still red with embarrassment.

"I didn't realise that you had trouble with reading, you were taking notes fine earlier" she said neutrally, keeping her voice clear of judgement.

"I don't, normally," Naruto protested, "Our languages have really different writing, completely different alphabets. I'm just learning to read yours slower than I did speaking it."

In demonstration, he pulled a blank piece of paper across the table and reached into his pocket, pulling out something that looked to be an odd combination of pen and brush. His hand moved gracefully and swiftly down the right-hand side of the paper, leaving behind a column of flowing symbols which he then presented to Blake. She couldn't make heads or tails of the symbols, but they had enough order to them that Naruto didn't seem to just be scribbling random junk to confuse her.

"Fair point," she conceded, giving up on Naruto's writing after a few moments.

Naruto watched her thoughtfully for a few seconds before grinning, "Honestly, I've never been good at reading or writing; I could barely do either until my godfather started teaching me _fūinjutsu._ I was never interested in reading when I was young, never could sit still long enough to read a good story."

The foreign word perked Blake's interest, but she filed it away for later. What had caught the book-loving faunus' attention even more, was the sudden thought of the sort of stories that Naruto had passed up when he was young. The sudden burst of curiosity at what sort of fiction a foreign culture might produce was almost overwhelming.

"Are books common in your lands?" she asked.

Naruto nodded, "Yeah, especially ninja villages like mine. Being a ninja is a pretty high stress job, and reading is a pretty common way to unwind for some people, though I never got into it that much despite my sensei's efforts."

That sounded promising. "It would be interesting to read the fiction of a foreign culture like yours, to see how your stories differ from ours."

"Suppose so, yeah," Naruto shrugged, not quite sharing Blake's enthusiasm, "Our fiction is a bit darker than yours I think, especially ninja stuff. Most ninjas I know either go for pretty dark fiction or, ah, raunchier romances."

Both of which sounded perfect for Blake. She had to smother the flash of amusement that bubbled up when she thought how, after spending so much time reading the Ninjas of Love series, it would be interesting to read an actual ninja romance novel. Not that Naruto could _ever_ find out about that, she'd have to hope that trade opened up between their nations sooner or later.

"We have plenty of dark fiction here, I've got some good ones if you want to borrow them some time," she continued, trying to keep the conversation on safer terms.

"Reality is darker than imagination, especially when ninja are involved." Naruto claimed, with a slightly unsettling grin, "A lot of our fiction is based on dramatising and exaggerating stuff that actually happened. Constant wars and ninja involvement make for some pretty good tales, and some pretty gory ones. Double, when demons get involved. I've got a pretty good book tucked away in a storage seal somewhere about a warrior who was possessed by a demo,n and had to fight internally for his soul, while at the same time getting caught up in a war between two nations. Good read, especially if you don't spoil the ending by knowing the actual events."

Blake's interest was definitely peaked. "Your literature sounds interesting," she said, before glancing down sadly at the incomprehensible symbols Naruto had written out for her as the obvious suddenly occurred to her, "I doubt there are many translations though."

Naruto followed her gaze and hummed, head tilting to the side and face scrunching up in what Blake was quickly starting to term his 'thinking face'. "Maybe we could help each other," he said after a few seconds, "You seem pretty smart, and I know a lot about my language's writing through my _fūinjutsu._ If I taught you how to read _Nihongo_, would you teach me to read your language?"

Blake perked up, giving Naruto a small smile, "That sounds fair." More than fair actually, seeing as Naruto seemed to know some of the basics of Valian, and she knew nothing of his language. He seemed happy with her answer though, giving her a wide smile.

Curiosity was now nudging insistently at Blake's mind about the word that Naruto had mentioned twice now, fūinjutsu. "Um, what is fūinjutsu?" she asked.

Naruto started a bit when she asked that, as though he hadn't realised he was talking about something that she had no idea about. "Oh, right, _fūinjutsu_. I forgot that you guys don't have it. It's, uh, hard to explain, I don't really know all of the words to describe it in your language. I suppose the best way to describe it would be… weaponised calligraphy."

Huh, now that was both interesting and completely uninformative at the same time, "I, what?" she asked, trying to make sense of what he had just said.

He gave a short laugh and reached into his jacket again, pulling out a slip of paper that he handed over to her. The paper felt unusually thick and rigid, with a red border around the edge and an array of incomprehensible symbols inked onto the centre in precise lines. "This is… interesting. What does it do?" she asked dubiously, holding the paper up so that it just happened to be between Naruto and her nose while she sniffed it. As far as her nose could tell there wasn't much to it aside from paper and ink.

"It explodes," he said, grinning as she jerked the paper away from her face in alarm. "They're called _Kibaku Fuda, _Explosive Tags in your language. I used a couple when we were running from the big scorpion thing yesterday, remember?"

Blake did indeed remember Naruto throwing _something_ back at the Deathstalker as they had ran, producing an impressively sized explosion. "This little thing can produce that much force?" she asked wonderingly, peering closer at the patterns inked into it and pondering how the hell it worked.

"Yup." Naruto said, bobbing his head and taking the tag back from her. "They pack a pun-" As he had been taking the tag back, the ninja moved his arm just a fraction too wide and the tag caught against the candle set on the table, beginning to burn merrily. Naruto's eyes widened and Blake felt her chest tighten, the tags that Naruto had thrown yesterday had been on fire before they exploded, hadn't they?

Instincts screaming at her, Blake threw herself from her seat and to the ground, curling up into as small a ball as she could and praying that her aura could take the explosion. There was a heavy second of silence, followed by another. And another. And another. Just when Blake was starting to get suspicious, the silence was broken by a snicker.

Blake's head snapped up to find Naruto leaning back in his chair and holding the smoldering remains of half the 'explosive' tag, giving her a cheshire grin.

"That wasn't even an explosive tag, was it?" she ground out between clenched teeth, glaring at Naruto and throwing a punch at his arm as she got back into her seat.

He took it without flinching. "It was, but they don't work like that," he laughed again at her unimpressed glare, hand once again finding its way behind his neck.

"You're sure?"

Naruto nodded, "They work by energy conversion; you put in pure energy, chakra or aura or whatever ya want to call it, and the seals convert it into the heat and energy for the explosion. The sizzle is part of the tags working, not how we set them off." He pulled out another tag and held it up to the candle again, not even flinching when the fire caught. "They're completely, uhh what's the word, inert?" Blake nodded, "Yeah, they're completely inert until you channel energy into them. Fire doesn't set them off, I'd be pretty stupid carrying them around all the time if it did."

Blake glanced suspiciously at the burnt tags, but let herself relax a bit. "You nearly gave me a heart attack," she complained.

"Sorry, sorry," Naruto said placatingly. "I couldn't resist. Ninja learn how these things work really young, so I don't get to play that trick very often."

With a huff, Blake settled back into her chair, "Next time you pull something like that-" she started harshly, letting herself feel a twinge of satisfaction at Naruto's flinch before she let her face soften, "Do it to Yang and Ruby, and give me some warning so I can take photos."

Naruto blinked slowly, processing Blake's abrupt change of tone and taking in her sudden grin, before answering with one of his own. "Deal."

"You're forgiven then."

They fell into silence for a few seconds, before Blake suddenly remembered the reason that she had been looking for Naruto in the first place.

"Oh, here, you forgot this earlier," she said, pulling Naruto's scroll out of her pocket and handing it to him. Naruto's face fell as he looked at the device, slowly taking it from Blake and popping it open to find the message from Cardin still hovering on the screen. He glared at the device for a moment before dismissing the message with a harsh swipe.

Despite her best efforts, Blake found her feline ears twitching as they tried to lower in sadness. While it wasn't anywhere near the same level of institutionalised discrimination, were so many parallels between how the humans of Beacon were treating Naruto, and how they treated the faunus that she couldn't help but feel sympathetic.

"What Cardin did, he-" Blake began, only to snap her mouth shut as Naruto's glare was suddenly turned on her. For a split second Naruto somehow looked less human; his face hardened into something that almost looked feral and his eyes even seemed to glow slightly, though surely that was a trick of the light. A chill ran down Blake's spine and she suddenly found it hard to breath, as though there was some invisible pressure on her lungs. From out of nowhere a feeling of dread fell over her, usually suppressed instincts rearing up in the face of what seemed like a very different Naruto to the one joking with her not a minute ago.

"I don't need someone to _tell _me that shit he pulled is wrong, like I'm a child," Naruto snapped at her. Blake didn't say anything, but her distress must have shown on her face, because after a moment Naruto visibly calmed himself, "Sorry."

The feeling of dread faded away with Naruto's anger, and he continued, "I'm used to people like Cardin and the rest of Beacon; I've been dealing with people hating me for what I am all of my life. But, that video got to me."

He fell quiet and Blake reached out to him, briefly laying a hand on his arm in comfort, "I can imagine that seeing a comrade… die like that must be hard," she didn't need to imagine after her time in the White Fang, but that was a piece of information too far.

"It's not just that, I see death more than I like as a ninja anyway. The guy from the video though, I knew him." Naruto replied. When Blake failed to interrupt him, he continued with his story.

"His name was Oki. When I was fifteen I messed up real bad on a mission, and I got assigned guard duty one of the gates for few weeks as punishment; Oki was my partner for that. He was a really nice guy, always just seemed so calm and wise. That video was the first time I'd ever seen him fighting, or even angry."

Naruto sighed and leaned back in his chair, running a hand through his hair. "I was pretty angry back then, there was a lot of shit going on between the nations and I got caught in some of the worst of it. Oki gave me some good advice, and someone to vent to; he helped me a lot. And now he's dead, _executed_ while he lay on the ground. Oki didn't deserve that."

Done with his story, Naruto trailed off into silence, eyes staring unfocused at the table. Blake's thoughts were getting dangerously close to revealing things she had worked hard to keep hidden. The smart thing to do would be keep quiet and change the subject, or leave. The little part of her that had driven her to the White Fang in the first place wouldn't let her stay silent though, and she found herself talking.

"I've found that the people of Vale are simultaneously capable of incredible kindness and generosity, and incredible ignorance and hatred," she started off quietly, watching Naruto intently for any reaction.

"The faunus," he said quietly, finally reopening his eyes. Blake didn't see any suspicion there, but remained cautious. By reputation, ninja were as much spies as they were assassins; discretion and attention to detail were crucial traits for them.

She nodded, "Sometimes it's hard to believe that the same people who are so kind to me, can be so hateful to others just because of the circumstances of their birth. Faunus are mistreated and abused all across Vale. Beacon is one of the most progressive places I've lived recently and people like Cardin are still not only tolerated, but accepted."

Naruto leaned back, joining his hands behind his head and staring blankly at the ceiling, "Humans fear what they don't know or understand, and they hate the things that they fear."

"Exactly," Blake said, "Your nation has taken a step in the right direction there, sending you to try and understand us and help us understand you. Hopefully, if you can help with spreading understanding, then the hatred and fear can be banished." She sighed darkly, "I used to, I still do, hope for the same with the faunus but, looking at the way the world is now, it's hard to keep that hope sometimes."

A bitter snort came from Naruto, "So," he began slowly, "what you're saying, is that the victim of the discrimination is the one who should be burdened with trying to fix it?"

"It isn't fair," Blake agreed, "but, it's how it it. People like Cardin, the ones taking part in the discrimination, rarely have much reason or motivation to fight for understanding or change." The two of them trailed off into silence, Blake suddenly worried that she had revealed too much and Naruto still staring blankly at the ceiling, his eyes unreadable.

After a short while, the silence was abruptly broken by Naruto. "Well, that got dark," he said, slowly linking his fingers and raising his arms upwards, stretching his shoulders back until the joints popped loud enough for Blake to hear. Slowly and reluctantly he reached out towards the table, picking up the history textbook from where it had lay ignored.

"Soooo," he said, glancing sideways at Blake, "You feel up to starting those lessons now? I've got-" he cracked the book open to where he had been before, checked the page number and grimaced, "-a long way to go."

With a nod, Blake rose out of her chair, arching her back as she stretched to pop her own stiff joints. "We have a few hours until curfew," she said agreeably, pulling her chair over so that she could see Naruto's book as well. "Now, where are you up to?"

* * *

**A/N: And there we go. Hopefully you enjoyed that, there are bits I'm a bit unsure about but after three months on hiatus I needed to get something written. The next chapter should be much better with some fluff, character development and the introduction of an early plot point all coming to a fanfic near you soon!**

**From this chapter onward we're going to deviate from RWBY canon more and more heavily. In general, this story will be more original stuff than it will follow the current RWBY stuff. There are some scenes and such which I'm planning to fit into the story that I particularly like, but in general writing the scenes that heavily follow canon is like pulling nails for me (Hence why this chapter has Port's class subbed out for history), so I'm moving away from that. I'm not quite sure how I'll handle the volume 3 stuff yet since much of the story past the volume 2 material is planned out, I'll have to see about that once volume 3 actually comes out. **


	7. Chapter 6: Growing Pains

**A/N: And another update! Slower than I intended, but certainly better than last time. **

**Big thanks to TehUnoman for beta reading this.**

* * *

Enough sugar and cream to make most people cringe and grind their teeth hit the spot _just_ right as Ruby sipped at her coffee, tapping away at the scroll balanced on her lap with her free hand. Despite keeping her hands busy, Ruby couldn't quite hide the nervous energy that was filling her, bursting out in the way her feet tapped the wall she was sitting astride.

It had been a full week since Team RUBY had been formed, and Ruby felt about ready to burst from all the information that had been stuffed into her head in those few days.

Monday through Wednesday had been packed full of lectures, workshops and seminars for the entire team, from academic subjects like History or Math to Huntsman specific ones like Grimm Studies and Aura Theory. Thursday had almost been a day off for most of the team, just a lone lecture in the middle of the day for Naruto, Blake, and Yang; but for Ruby it had been packed full of enough leadership specific classes to leave her head spinning.

And now, Friday. Friday was odd; the team had no classes scheduled, but it still wasn't a day off. Instead Ruby, as leader, was to organise a day of physical and combat training for her team as she saw fit.

The thought was oddly intimidating. Beyond her own workout routine, specialised for the speed, reflexes, and arm strength that she needed to wield Crescent Rose, Ruby didn't know a whole lot about physical training. Yang had always been the one who had taken after their father there, learning so much about the human body and how to train it that she had always joked if she ever washed out of hunting she could always open her own gym. Heck, she had pretty much custom designed Ruby's training regime for her.

Unfortunately, the flurry of classes hadn't given Ruby much time to ask Yang's advice. So she had spent last night putting together a plan that she hoped would do until she could come up with something better, while also helping the team to (hopefully) bond a bit.

God knows they could use some of that. Ruby sighed at the thought; it was frustrating, Team RUBY had the makings of a great team, she could _feel_ it. Every now and then the various members would mesh in a way that worked perfectly and just felt natural. It never lasted though, and Ruby despaired at the thought that trying to pull these fragmented pieces together was her responsibility.

Ruby's scroll beeped cheerfully as an alarm sounded, informing her in bold letters that it was now 9:30. The redhead gave herself a few more seconds to mentally prepare before flicking the messenger app open and sending off a trio of prepared messages, calling her team to meet. The scroll beeped as the messages were sent, and Ruby minimised it with a flick of her wrist and set off towards her destination

As well as the various academic facilities that it boasted, Beacon Academy came equipped with the largest training center that Ruby had ever seen. The training center was housed in its own complex and separated from the main campus by a wide field, which was ringed by an impressively large running track and pockmarked with battle scars from sparring students.

It was here that Ruby was making her way to meet her team. To her surprise, as she approached the building Ruby, found that Naruto had beaten her here and was sitting on one of the benches outside, staring off into space.

As she approached, Ruby eyed Naruto carefully, trying to gauge his mood. After the good start to the week, Naruto's behaviour had been unpredictable recently. At times, the ninja seemed friendly and open; joking about with Ruby, eagerly learning everything he could, and generally being a model teammate. His mood seemed to fluctuate wildly though, and at other times he seemed strained, tired, jumpy, and sometimes downright nasty if someone caught him unaware. The latter was particularly true early in the morning.

He seemed to be in a slightly better mood than the past few days from what she could see. Tired, slightly dazed, and not all there, but not particularly ill-tempered, so Ruby made her way over with a wave that he didn't even seem to notice.

"Good morning Naruto!" Ruby chirped as she got closer, hoping that if she threw enough happiness at him it would be infectious. Naruto jerked up in surprise and began glancing around wildly, one hand darting towards one of the knives Ruby had noticed him hiding around his body, until he saw that it was her and relaxed a bit.

"Oh, uh, morning Red," he called around a yawn.

Ruby sat herself down on the bench near the ninja, trying to hide her frown as she got a good look at him. This close up, she could clearly see the unfocused glaze to his eyes, and the dark bags hanging under them. After a few seconds she realised that she had been staring when Naruto raised an eyebrow at her questioningly. Ruby flushed and stammered, "A-are you alright? You look uhh, well-"

"I'm fine." Naruto cut her off. When Ruby continued to look at him sceptically he sighed and continued. "I've not been sleeping too well recently. I can burn chakra to stay awake, but that doesn't stop me from feeling like shit. It's nothing serious."

That wasn't news to Ruby - Naruto's nightmares were vocal enough that the entire team knew about them by now - but it was the first time that he had actually mentioned it to one of them, rather than trying to pretend it wasn't happening. Progress!

"Missing home?" she guessed. Ruby was feeling more than a little homesick herself, and Patch was barely a day away from Beacon in an airship. Naruto had mentioned offhand once that it had taken weeks for him to get here by airship; Ruby couldn't imagine what being that far away from home must feel like.

There was a long moment of silence before Naruto answered, long enough for Ruby to just start worrying that she shouldn't have pushed. "Kinda. I do miss Konoha, but it's a bit more than that. I…" Naruto paused and looked conflicted, as though he wasn't sure whether to keep talking or not. Before he could decide, the choice was made for him as a bright voice cut through the quiet.

"Hellooooooooo!" Yang's voice came from down the path and Naruto's mouth snapped shut, a sour look flitting across his face for a moment. Naruto and Yang had continued to butt heads pretty much all the time they weren't ignoring each other, and it tended to be just a bit too heartfelt for Ruby to be comfortable with.

Ruby had never felt so annoyed at the sound of her sister's voice. As soon as she appeared walking down the path towards them, Naruto closed right back up; whatever he had possibly been about to tell her lost to the wind. Instead he looked past Yang and raised a hand to the black-haired girl walking quietly a few feet behind her, which Blake hesitantly returned after a second.

The last member of Team RUBY was hard for Ruby to describe, in part because she seemed to go out of her way to avoid talking to them more than was necessary. Naruto seemed to be bonding with her a bit over books, and Yang seemed to be having some small progress through sheer force of will and repetition, but so far Blake had been not only resistant but also hostile to most attempts to break her out of her shell. When she wasn't quietly reading with Naruto or playing the annoyed straight-man to the chaos that was Yang, Blake was usually found in the nearest corner with one of her books.

Blake took a perch on the bench opposite Naruto, and Yang spun on her heel, letting herself fall to lean against the wall. "So, we're here. What's goin' on, oh sister O' mine?" Yang asked.

Putting Naruto's thoughts aside, Ruby rose from her seat with a grin and moved so that she was facing everybody.

"Weeeeeeell," she started, "We're supposed to use Fridays for physical training and stuff-"

"Aww man, I thought we had another free day." Yang complained, wincing as Ruby kicked at her shin and glared playfully.

"Don't complain, I don't even get one day off," she muttered, "Anyway, today is our training day! Now, I thought it would be a good idea for us to get together and go over team stuff. Get to know each other and how we fight, practising team movements, helping each other out, that sorta thing."

Before Ruby had even finished speaking, she had noticed Naruto and Yang giving each other sour looks at the thought of spending an entire day with the other. Suddenly realising that this was going to be harder than she had though, Ruby tried to soldier ahead.

"We've all got our basic routines and none of us really need the others to help with that, doing that stuff today would be a waste of the only free day where we aren't going to be swamped with homework. We need to work on our teamwork if we want to do well out in the field, and this is the best time to do it," she continued, trying to put on her best 'inspiring leader' voice.

It seemed to be moderately effective. After a moment, Naruto stopped glaring at Yang. "Alright, what've you got planned for us then?"

Beaming, Ruby laid out her plan, "I thought that to start off we should just split up into our pairs, start thinking of ways we can combine our skills and stuff." Naruto and Yang both perked up a bit at that and Ruby smiled, getting a bit of her confidence back.

The training center featured dozens of expansive indoor arenas that they could use, along with specialised training rooms of almost every shape and type. When the team quickly split up into their partnerships and began wandering the building in search of a room to use, Naruto and Ruby ended up claiming one of the larger arena style rooms.

"Wow, Beacon has plenty of toys," Naruto remarked with a whistle as they entered the room. As well as a section lined with reinforced foam for sparring, each room had a miniature gym's worth of training equipment, targets for ranged practise, and a full set of combat robots to spar against.

"Yup," Ruby agreed, gazing around the room. "There's a reason people come from all over Remnant to attend Beacon. There's all sorts of expensive training equipment we can use; big arenas like this, all sorts of outdoor ranges, combat robots to fight against, there's even supposed to be an awesome holographic projection arena somewhere around here." Ruby's eyes were growing a bit starstruck and she paused, clearing her throat as she caught herself.

"Anyway, so, uh, yeah. Training." Now that they were actually down to it, Ruby's mind had gone blank. All the ideas that she had been mulling over earlier had run straight for the border now that she actually needed them.

Naruto's eyes glinted with humour as he noticed her discomfort. "Yup, training," he teased unhelpfully.

With a groan, Ruby dropped her head down into her hands.

After a few painful seconds, Naruto's straight face broke and he grinned. "Shall we start with a spar?" he suggested, "I didn't really see much of how you fought in the initiation, was more focused on the big scary monsters. It's always easier to actually show someone how you fight than to try and describe it to them."

"Sounds good to me." Ruby said, latching onto the idea. After all the public speaking she had forced herself to do earlier, letting her sweetheart do some talking for her sounded wonderful.

With a flourish, Ruby pulled Crescent Rose from her back and unfolded the scythe into its full form. Naruto drew his sword and held it in a backwards stance, free hand hovering forwards as he watched her intently.

The room was silent as a grave for several seconds as they both slowly began to walk in a circle, each sizing the other up. Ruby always worked better on the attack so after a few moments she decided to take the initiative, pulsing her semblance to dash forwards and deliver a simple horizontal swipe.

Predictably Naruto ducked the swipe. She had been expecting that though and kept the motion from her first strike moving, spinning her entire body into a diagonal-uppercut slash while Naruto was still crouched. Sparks flashed through the air as Naruto parried the blow aside, keeping the flat edge of his blade flush with his arm and using it to push Crescent Rose's blade just above his head.

The exchange continued for a few more seconds, Ruby keeping her scythe's momentum rolling around her body and delivering a stream of quick blows that Naruto either dodged or pushed aside, until Ruby finally got one of her blows inside Naruto's guard. This time the blade came so close to Naruto that Ruby could see his hair ruffling as it passed as the ninja bent over backwards to dodge. Before she could follow up though, she found herself abruptly on the defensive as, rather than rising, Naruto balanced on his hands and delivered a quick combination of kicks that shook Crescent Rose's handle when she blocked them.

Ruby jumped back and Naruto flipped back to his feet, taking the same position as before. "Not bad," he commented with a grin. Ruby returned the grin, before abruptly dropping Crescent Rose's barrel down and preparing to fire.

That was a mistake. Before she could pull the trigger Naruto had darted up close, and this time Ruby found herself on the defensive, spinning her weapon rapidly to block the storm of quick strikes Naruto was sending her way. Ruby was so focused on the strikes that she almost didn't notice when a second Naruto came from behind her! She was forced to drop to the ground to dodge the second's sword, firing Crescent Rose at their feet and using the recoil to throw herself clear.

She quickly rolled to her feet and spun around as five Narutos, all with identical grins on their faces, rushed forwards towards her. The numbers were intimidating, but the copies seemed to fight with more simplistic tactics than the original and Ruby was able to keep them at bay with wide slashes. She remembered how fragile the clones he had used in the initiation had been and began aiming to just catch them with any strike she could, weak or strong.

Soon enough, the numbers began to fall. One clone burst into a cloud of smoke when a rifle round clipped its side, while another was unfortunate enough to get Crescent Rose's blade shoved right through its chest. The last one made Ruby wince and pause for a moment until it burst into smoke, a horrible thought flashing across her mind for a split second that it was the actual Naruto she had just stabbed.

The remaining Narutos, presumably two clones and the original, were now approaching her more cautiously. With a confident laugh Ruby took off, using her semblance to literally run circles around the trio. They turned their backs to each other nervously, watching the cloud of petals slowly grow larger and larger.

Without warning Ruby dove out of the cloud, reducing one clone to smoke in an instant. The other two swung to react but Ruby was in her element, bouncing Crescent Rose off the floor and straight into another clone's face. The original moved to cut at her while she was overextended but Ruby used the force of another shot to counteract her momentum, stilling Crescent Rose and then jabbing at Naruto's thigh with the small blade set into the bottom of the shaft.

She had been expecting some resistance to the blow as it hit Naruto's aura, but it never came. The blade pierced Naruto's thigh and he too burst into smoke, leaving Ruby standing alone in an empty room.

Ruby looked around the room in confusion until a glint of light caught her attention at the last minute. She looked up to find Naruto crouching to the ceiling above her like a spider, sword at the ready. He pushed off, launching himself straight down at her.

Sparks flashed through the air as Ruby just managed to deflect Naruto's stab. The ninja recovered quickly, moving fluidly into a fast paced attack and RUby fell back, Crescent Rose blurring in her hands as she attempted to keep Naruto at bay. Ruby was used to fighting monsters, not humans, and Grimm tended to attack in short bursts of aggression rather than extended flurries like this. Ruby was quick with her scythe, but the large weapon was just too heavy when fighting someone as quick as Naruto - even if he was slower than herself - with such a light weapon. On the offence she could use momentum to her advantage, but on the defence like this the weight began to add up.

Eventually Naruto broke through, sending Ruby flinching back with a yelp as his sword glanced painfully off her thigh, aura managing to block the blade but not the sting. The blow broke her concentration and was followed by several more to her arms and stomach, each hit drawing a small flash of light as her aura blocked as much of the blow as it could. Eventually a strike to the wrist numbed Ruby's hand and Crescent Rose fell to the floor with a clatter. One leg-sweep later she was down on her backside, Naruto's sword hovering near her neck.

There was a moment of silence, before they simultaneously grinned at each other. Ruby's faded fairly quickly as she flopped back against the floor. "I prefer fighting Grimm, they're a lot slower," she groaned, feeling the ache where Naruto had landed blows on her.

"Most things are, compared to a ninja," Naruto grinned, "You're a lot faster with that thing than I expected." He still kept his sword hovering close against her throat, and it took Ruby a second to remember that they were technically still fighting by tournament rules.

She made a vague, groaning noise and dropped her head back. "I forfeit," she confirmed tiredly. Naruto began to open his mouth, when the door flew open with a bang and everything went to hell.

* * *

"-and then BOOM! Right in the face. I call it the Yang-a-rang," Yang exclaimed, throwing her arms into the air to punctuate her speech.

For a few moments there was silence, broken only by the tap of their shoes as Blake and Yang walked through the halls of the training center, until Blake spoke, "No."

Yang's face dropped into an over-exaggerated pout and Blake rolled her eyes. "But why? It would be awesome!" the blonde protested.

"Because-" Blake began firmly, face stony in the wake of Yang's pleading eyes, "-momentum is a thing. At best you'd launch me into the sky, at worst you'd rip my arm off."

There was a sigh as Yang deflated like a balloon. "You're no fun," she griped.

After a few moments, Blake relented. "It _might_ work without the explosives," she allowed cautiously.

She might have garnered a less horrified reaction if she had suggested to Yang that they slaughter a litter of puppies, judging by the look in her eyes. "B-but, you need the explosives!" Yang protested, "You can't have a Yang-a-rang without a bang!"

Faced with such destruction of the Valian language, Blake couldn't help but stop in her tracks and drop her head down into her palm. Yang stood off to the side, grinning unrepentantly.

Blake sighed and shook her head, setting off walking again. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Yang pouting as she followed along behind her. "Tough crowd,"

"How do you think Ruby and Naruto are doing?" Blake asked, purposefully trying to change the subject. Denying attention for poor behaviour seemed to work with children, hopefully it would work with her equally childish partner. Hopefully. Something about Yang's knowing grin gave her a fairly hopeless feeling about it though.

For now, she had succeeded in distracting her partner though; at the mention of Naruto's name a sour look ran across Yang's face. And there it was, one of the few things that Blake genuinely disliked about her partner. Overall Blake thought that she had come out pretty well in the game of chance that had decided their partnerships, especially looking at some of the other options such as CRDL. Yang was an exceptional fighter - the several new bruises Blake was now nursing stood testament to that fact - and a lot smarter than her overly bubbly personality sometimes let on, but her irrational dislike of Naruto was a black mark that reminded Blake a little too much of the way many Vale natives acted towards the Faunus.

"I dunno. If he's managed to not kill her, that'd be a good start." Yang muttered, the smile truly dropping from her face for the first time since they had split from the others earlier.

Blake frowned, opening her mouth to speak but aborting the motion. It had been a close call with Naruto on the first day when she had let her emotions talk her into saying too much, she didn't want to potentially tip Yang off as well. "You've been pretty harsh towards Naruto. Not as harsh as some," her mind flickered to CRDL, "but still. What's your problem with him?"

There, hopefully that was neutral enough to not arouse suspicion. She'd managed to avoid linking the faunus into it at least. "I dunno. It's not like I hate him or anything, it's just hard to trust him after seeing all those news videos, and hearing the stories." Yang replied, linking her arms behind her head as she walked and talked. The blonde gave a heavy sigh and continued, "I think I'd find it easier to get over it if he wasn't in Ruby's team, y'know? I've always been looking out for her, it's hard to see her in danger."

"So your dislike of him is just based on his people's reputation, like the faunus?" Dammit brain! The words had slipped out of Blake's mouth before she had really thought it over.

Yang gave her a sharp, offended, look. "I'm not a bigot," she snapped, "Being a ninja is something he chose to do, not something he was born with. It'd be closer to being unsure about a particular faunus because they were part of one of the terrorist groups or something."

Well, _that_ was the cue for Blake to shut her mouth about that particular subject, especially when Yang continued defensively, "Besides, it's hardly like you two're best friends or anything."

She did have a point there. As they had agreed Blake had spent some time one night that week helping Naruto improve his reading and beginning to learn the basics of his language, but other that that she had been avoiding him as subtly as she could. The blonde foreigner seemed to have a talent for getting under people's skin and getting them talking, making him a dangerous person for Blake to be around.

Plus, as much as she tried to deny it, something about him set her on edge. It wasn't a conscious thing, like Yang, but something deeper. Some little hidden part of her brain - the same part that made her hiss at dogs, drool when she smelled tuna and hate laser pointers with a burning passion - recoiled in fear when she saw him. Something about the way he moved, the way he held himself, or some other thing too small for regular senses to notice, made that animalistic part of Blake's brain scream 'predator!'.

She'd noticed the same scenario playing out with many of the actual animals around the campus. The cats which would linger around their dorm and peer curiously at Blake were nowhere to be found when Naruto was around, and on one memorable occasion the dogs that the airdock security teams used - big, fearsome atlesian shepherds - had whimpered and hidden behind their handlers when Naruto had passed by.

"It's not like I'm _anyone's_ best friend," she defended weakly, realising that she had taken a while responding. Blake only _just_ managed to stop herself reflexively hissing in shock when a pair of strong arms suddenly closed around her.

"Awww, don't you worry Spooky, we'll change that soon enough," Yang crooned, crushing Blake tight against her.

"S- spooky?" the secret faunus spluttered, pushing against Yang in an attempt to free her head from her partner's bountiful chest.

"Yep!" Yang confirmed, finally letting go of Blake and bouncing backwards, "You're all dark and mysterious and stuff."

"I, I don't even…" For the second time in as many minutes, Blake found her forehead making sharp contact with her palm while Yang gave her a shit-eating grin and patted her on the shoulder.

After giving herself a moment to recover, Blake spun on her heel and took off down the hallway again, leaving Yang scrambling to catch up. Soon enough the door to the exercise room Ruby and Naruto had claimed looked before them and Yang's mood dropped again, the blonde frowning as she saw the door. Abruptly Yang overtook Blake, pausing before the door.

Yang waited for a moment before the door, resting her face in her palm and taking a breath. When she was done, she looked up and her face bore the same energetic smile that it had earlier. She tossed Blake a quick grin, before rearing back and planting her boot firmly into the door.

"Oh Ruuubbbbyyyyyyyyy," Yang called, striding through the door as it banged open dramatically. Suddenly, Blake ran into Yang's back as the blonde stopped in her tracks, staring in horror at the scene before them. Ruby lay sprawled on the ground not far from the door, Naruto standing over her and holding the tip of his sword to her neck.

Blake found herself tensing up instinctively, adrenaline rushing through her veins. Thinking quick was a requirement to either host an ambush or survive one, and Blake had plenty of experience with both, so it only took her a split second to take in what was actually happening. Sharp eyes took note of the relaxed posture that Naruto stood in, the weak grip he had on his sword, and the faint grin on Ruby's face despite the razor-sharp blade an inch away from her throat. Before she had even finished reacting, Blake had realised what was actually happening and relaxed.

Unfortunately, Yang was just as quick to overreact to the threat as Blake was to dismiss it; in fact if her reaction had been aimed at a more appropriate target Blake would have honestly been impressed. In one smooth motion Yang opened the door, took in the scene, and raised her arm to deliver a blast that left Blake's ears (both sets) ringing, and sent Naruto tumbling backwards limply.

In a second Ruby was on her feet, face a mixture of shock and anger. "What the hell, Yang?" she shrieked.

Blake could practically see the miniature heart attack that Yang had just experienced written across her face. "I you, he, it looked like he was-" the blonde began to stammer.

"We were sparring!" Ruby snapped indignantly.

"I thought that he'd hurt you!" Yang snapped back

"That doesn't mean you had to _shoot_ him!"

"Oh calm down, it was only a normal slug. It won't have pierced his aura."

Pierced aura or not it looked like the shot had hurt; Naruto had yet to rise from where he had fallen. Face scrunching up in concern, Blake tuned out the arguing sisters and made her way over to Naruto. The colour drained from her face as she got closer, spying the splash of crimson leaking from Naruto's side.

"Guys." the rising panic in Blake's voice cut through the sister's argument and got their attention, "Get over here!"

Both Ruby and Yang zipped over when they heard her voice, their eyes going wide as they took in the form of Naruto, curled around the bloody hole now torn in his side. There was a moment of horrified silence, until Yang finally spoke.

"Oh shit."

* * *

The silence was heavy, and almost unbearably awkward. None of the assembled members of Team RWBY, all seated in a rough circle on the floor, seemed willing to take the first step and break the silence, or even really look at each other. Eventually Yang was the one to break the silence with a quiet cough.

"Sooooooooooooo," she began to talk, wincing as three sets of angry eyes turned to glare at her, "Aura and chakra, aren't the same thing?"

"Apparently not," Naruto replied, voice sharp as a blade.

"And, you don't actually have aura."

"Nope."

"So, no protective field."

"Nope."

"So if you get hit by something like a bullet…"

Naruto didn't even answer that with any words, just nodded his head down to where Blake was inspecting and cleaning the gash that the training round had torn through his side.

"Shit," Yang summarised eloquently.

"Yep," he agreed.

"How bad is it?" This time the question was directed down towards Blake, who had just finished wiping disinfectant from the room's first aid kit over the exposed flesh.

The black-haired girl gave Yang an unimpressed glance before she spoke. "Not that bad actually, all things considered. The slug glanced off his rib without doing any damage to the bone, and there's less flesh damage than I would've expected."

Yang's sigh of relief was met with a glare as Blake snapped, "Less than I expected is still significant damage. If your aim had been a little bit different, or if his ribs hadn't somehow held out, you could have killed him!"

"Well, how the hell was I supposed to know I was shooting at the only person in the whole school who _can't_ shrug stuff like that off?" Yang snapped, feeling rather unfairly put upon. Her teammates didn't seem to agree with her, judging by the chilly silence she received.

"Would it make any difference if I said I was sorry?" she asked weakly, trying to put some humour into the situation. Blake's face didn't even twitch, if anything it somehow grew even more stony.

Naruto though, snorted in amusement. "Depends, do I get to shoot you?" he asked glibly.

"Sure." Yang replied, as though Naruto had just asked her to lend him five lien. The blonde grinned at Naruto's look of shock and loosened one Ember Celia with a faint click, tossing the gauntlet over to him casually and standing up.

"You just put it on and then twitch your thumb backwards like this to fire," she explained, gesturing with her thumb as an example while Naruto slid the gauntlet into place and began to look at it curiously. "The slugs in there now won't get past my aura but they still pack a punch, so give me a warni-"

Rather predictably, Yang's request was interrupted as Naruto abruptly shot her straight in the chest. Blake leaned over with a flicker of concern as Yang crumpled and fell to the floor with a wheeze, lapsing back into disinterest once the brawler began cursing after a few seconds. "Son of a bitch, right in the tit! That's gonna be a fun bruise later," she griped, pulling herself back into a sitting position and gingerly rubbing her chest.

"That was surprisingly satisfying." Naruto said with a grin, tossing the gauntlet back to Yang.

"Yeah, shooting stuff is fun," Yang agreed, sliding it back into place. She paused for a moment, looking at Naruto uncertainly, "We cool?"

Naruto snorted in amusement, "Yeah, whatever."

"That's it?" Blake asked incredulously, "She shot you!"

"Eh," Naruto said with a shrug, "I survived. If I held a grudge against everybody who put a hole in me, I'd not have many friends." Something odd seemed to flash across his face as he said that and his hand twitched upwards towards his left breast, but it quickly vanished.

There was a solid slap as Ruby's head fell into her hands. "It's not even lunch time, and two people have already been shot. I'm a terrible leader," she groaned. Despite the words, when Naruto and Yang both began laughing Ruby lifted her head to reveal a faint grin, and the atmosphere of the room finally began to lift.

"I think it's more the team than the leader, in this case," Blake remarked dryly.

After chuckling for a moment, Naruto glanced down at Blake, "So, am I good?" he asked, gesturing to the wound.

Blake gave him a disapproving look of his very own, "Well, if you insist on not going to the medical ward-"

"Not a chance in hell for a scratch like that," Naruto interrupted, shuddering at the very thought of the place. He and hospitals most definitely did not get along.

"-you should be able to manage. Let me bandage it at least," she finished. Naruto nodded and stayed still while Blake did just that, spreading some sort of cold cream into the wound before pushing it together and getting started.

Off to the side, Ruby shuddered. "I dunno how you can stand doing that Blake," she muttered squeamishly, glancing at the work in progress.

"It's just blood, you'll need to get used to seeing it sooner or later as a huntress," Blake said neutrally, not looking up from her work.

"Yeah, but Grimm usually disintegrate before you get a good look. Makes it feel less real."

Blake's eyes flickered to look at Ruby without moving their head, something halfway between annoyance and pity flashing across them as the redhead completely missed her point. With a brusque movement she tied off the bandage around Naruto's waist. "There, that should help. It's still going to hurt though when you do… pretty much anything."

"Eh, I've survived worse," Naruto said dismissively, glancing down at the bandage before dropping his shirt back down to cover it, "Nice job."

"So, uh, how _did_ you survive that, by the way?" Yang asked, wincing again when Blake and Ruby both snapped their heads to stare at her while Naruto chuckled. "That slug should have messed up an unshielded human a lot more than that," she explained sheepishly.

"Just because I can't create a forcefield like yours, doesn't mean that I'm defenceless." Naruto grinned, folding his arms behind his head, "We can do a lot of the same stuff with chakra that you can with aura. I can focus chakra into my muscles, and use it to increase my speed and strength like you can. I can do some stuff you can't as well; I can strengthen my senses like sight and smell, and I can pump a bunch of energy into my body to harden my muscles and strengthen my bones to take hits. It works better for blunt impacts than sharp objects or bullets-" he paused here to give Yang a look, "-but it still helps. That's why I have a small cut in my side, rather than a big hole straight through my lung."

"You strengthened your ribs to deflect the slug?" Blake asked, eyes widening as she but it together.

"Yep. I can't do a great deal defensively with my muscles, but it works better with the bones. Something to do with the bone marrow acting as a conductor; I dunno, I'm not a medic nin. But yeah, I can make my bones almost unbreakable, cushion my internal organs, stuff like that. I've seen guys get kicked straight through concrete walls head first and shake it off in a few seconds before."

Ruby had been listening intently as he spoke, eyes bright and head cocked to the side as she thought. "What about all that other stuff you were doing in the initiation?" the redhead chimed in, "All that stuff with the air you were doing, and those chains you held the Deathstalker with. You said that wasn't your semblance right?"

"Yep, I don't even have a semblance; no one from my land does, same as aura. I suppose my regeneration is sort of like our equivalent of a semblance, kinda. It's complicated." That was, of course, a complete and utter lie, but also the easiest way to explain it away before it became an issue. "The stuff I was doing with wind was what we call ninjutsu. There are all sorts of different elemental ninjutsu; fire, wind, water, lightning and earth are the most common. Everyone who uses chakra has an element they've got an affinity for, mine is wind. I can do stuff with the other elements, but I tend to overpower it really badly and lose control."

"So, if we see you using something other than wind, we should get out of the way?" Yang asked teasingly.

Naruto's face flashed grim, "Yeah, do. Last time I used a fire technique I tried to set one guy on fire and accidentally burnt down a whole village with a single fireball." In his defence, that had been the Kyuubi's fault more than his - Naruto's control issues were even worse than normal when the fox's ridiculously strong Katon affinity came into play - but the same concept did apply to the other elements.

It might have been a trick of the light, but Yang's face seemed a shade paler than before. "If you start playing with fire, duck and cover; got it."

"Yep. And lastly, the chains I used were actually fūinjutsu, not ninjutsu." He rolled up his sleeve, revealing the intricate sealing array snaking down his left arm and ending in a 'Chain' kanji on the inside of his wrist, "Similar general concept to the explosive tags - chakra laced ink - just tattooed on my arm and a _lot_ more complicated. Technically it's possible to use the chains without this but, again, my control sucks. This seal helps me focus and actually control them."

"Ooh, that's cool." Ruby leaned in close, peering at the tattoo that had saved her hide a week ago, "Sounds like you can do a lot of different stuff with chakra."

"Yep, and that's not even close to all the stuff that ninja can do." Naruto laughed at their shocked expressions, "Chakra is really adaptable, and ninja make a point of learning as many little tricks we can to surprise people. Wind element attacks, fūinjutsu, and general badassery is a pretty good short summary of what I usually do though. We'd be here for days if I tried to go over absolutely everything."

"Wind, chains, occasionally way too much fire, got it." Ruby said weakly, glancing at the clock. "We should probably move on now, we're behind schedule as it is," she glanced uncertainly at Naruto and Yang, "If we move onto the team stuff now, can I trust you two not to hurt each other anymore?"

"I'll try, but no promises." Yang said, but she was grinning mischievously as Blake sighed behind her.

"That'll have to do," Ruby's lips tweaked into a smile, "Let's get started then…"

* * *

Team RUBY had staggered back to the dorm room that night barely able to stand and, to a man, had fallen asleep the second their heads had hit their pillows. Naruto didn't even bother to undress fully, he just shed his outer layers and collapsed into his bed. Ruby might have been unsure of herself starting the day out, but she proved to be a harsh taskmaster once she got into her stride. She ran herself just as ragged as she did them though, which earned her a healthy dram of respect in Naruto's eyes.

Despite the tiring day that had left him exhausted, both mentally and physically, there was no rest to be found in Naruto's sleep that night.

As soon as Naruto's eyes had closed, the visions began. Nightmares and flashbacks weren't anything unusual for a ninja, but these particular ones had been haunting Naruto's sleep for weeks now. They had become routine, but that fact made them no less distressing.

Along with the visions came the alien feeling of _not-belonging_ that always accompanied them. The visions were contradictory, both muffled and distorted but simultaneously some of the most vivid he had ever experienced. It was almost as though he was viewing the memories through a frame of frosted glass, but receiving the emotions directly on a subconscious level. None of the substance, all of the feelings of failure and self-hatred the next morning.

Despite the lack of clarity, some things were always discernible. Naruto had worked with his team for almost two years and, even distorted, he could pick out their voices as they screamed and died. Chief among them was that ever recognisable shade of pink, and a scream that Naruto imagined would haunt him to the end of his days.

Suddenly he found himself back in the room, dripping in sweat and with a half-muffled shout on his lips. For a few moments he stayed still and quiet, letting the quiet breathing of Team RUBY wash over him. Describing his relationship with the team as rocky would be putting it generously, but at this moment he couldn't help but take some faint comfort in the steady, slow sound. Eventually he relaxed and slowly untensed his muscles, letting out a breath he hadn't realised that he was holding.

"That sounded like a bad one."

Naruto jerked in alarm at the soft voice, swivelling his head around wilding until he spotted Ruby, or more accurately Ruby's head. The girl was leaning upside down from her bunk, only the tips of her fingers and her head visible. It was hard to make much out in the dim light, but he could see a look half of guilt and half of sympathy on her face.

"I, I…" he stammered, shocked by the sudden appearance.

The inverted girl raised one finger to her lips in a shushing motion. "Hold on, give me a sec. _Hup_." Ruby gracefully flipped down from her bunk, landing almost silently on the floor. Neither her or Naruto noticed the faint twitch from Blake's bunk at the sound.

"You're up late," Naruto said nonchalantly, trying and failing to hide the shakiness to his voice and pretend nothing had happened. It didn't work; Ruby made another shushing motion and scampered off, disappearing into the small lounge the first-years shared. Naruto pushed himself up and sat cross-legged, watching the shadow cast through the half-open door dart erratically around the small kitchenette. After a minute she reappeared, bearing two steaming mugs.

"Here ya go, the Ruby-Rose-Nightmare-Special," she said, holding one of the mugs out to him. Naruto had never been fond of the tea that many of the older ninja drank and had taken a similar dislike to the Remnant equivalent, so he tried to refuse. But Ruby was persistent, and as she waved the mug in his face and demanded, "Drink," he smelt something sweet and unusual.

He took the mug gingerly and sipped slowly. Rather than the sharp taste of coffee, he was taken aback by the bittersweet flavour of chocolate, accompanied by a ridiculous about of sugar. The flavour was overpoweringly sweet, and just what Naruto needed right now. He paused for a moment, processing the concoction, before taking a large swig while Ruby nodded approvingly in the background. Naruto looked up from the mug to find Ruby smiling at him expectantly, to which he sighed.

"Ruby, this really isn't something you need to be worried abo-"

"Nope," she interrupted him, popping the 'P'.

"But it-"

"Nope."

Naruto sighed and glared at her, making Ruby giggle. The redhead smiled brightly and looked him in the eye, "I'm your leader, your teammate and, I hope, your friend. That's three good reasons for me to be worried," she said firmly, before gesturing at his bed, "Do you mind-?"

"Sure, knock yourself out," he sighed. He'd heard that tone of voice before, from himself on several occasions. Arguing with her was just going to be more trouble than it was worth.

Clutching her own cup, Ruby hopped up onto Naruto's bed, settling her back against the wall and sipping at her own drink. The two sat in silence, Ruby watching Naruto expectantly and Naruto stubbornly ignoring her, focusing on his hot chocolate. Eventually Ruby gave up and broke the silence herself, "Y'know, this usually works better when you talk."

Naruto just grunted in response, keeping as much of his focus as he could on his mug. Showing weakness like he was right now to someone he knew as little about as he did Ruby went against every piece of ninja training he had ever received, talking even more about it was the last thing he wanted to do right now. Unfortunately, ignoring Ruby didn't make her go away.

"Alright, I'll start-" Ruby sighed, "-who's Sakura?"

The silence coming from Naruto somehow got even more chilly as he tensed and glared at Ruby, the younger girl flinching back from eyes that suddenly seemed to have little flecks of red drifting through them. "How do you know that name?"

"I… you were talking in your sleep," Ruby replied. After a few more seconds staring at her, Naruto deflated and flopped backwards, leaning his head against the wall and no longer meeting Ruby's eyes.

The silence stretched on, until Naruto finally spoke again. "She was my partner."

"Did… something happen to her?" Ruby asked, fidgeting with her fingers and making no attempts to meet Naruto's eyes either.

"She died," he snapped, his words ending with a harsh, final note. Ruby's expression was almost heartbreaking, but he kept his face hard, trying not to show the cracks widening in his facade as his mind drifted back to the dreams and the memories behind them.

"I'm sorry," she muttered after a few seconds, "I just wanted to try and help."

He sighed, face softening slightly. "I wish that you _could_ help me somehow. It'd be nice to get a proper nights sleep for once."

Ruby perked up a bit, "It's gotta be possible, we've just gotta figure out how. When I was younger I had a lot of nightmares after…" she broke off, coughing and giving Naruto a nervous glance, "Well, yeah, I had a lot of nightmares."

"And how did you deal with them?" he asked, humouring her.

"Yang," she said simply. "I'd wake up crying and Yang would always be there for me. Some nights she pretty much just slept in my bed with me, keeping me company. Buuuttt…"

"I don't think that would work for me," Naruto finished, casting a glance over at Yang's sleeping form.

"Yeah, not unless you somehow make Yang _really_ like you." Ruby giggled, pausing for a moment as her grin became a grimace, "Actually, _eww_, no. Don't do that, let's scrap that plan all together."

Naruto's face cracked into a small grin, "Hmm. I might just take that as a challenge," he shot back, waggling his eyebrows. The ninja couldn't help but laugh softly at Ruby's horrified glare, and after a moment she began to join him.

Eventually, the awkwardness of the encounter began to fade. Ruby stayed on safer topics, and the two spent half an hour chatting about schoolwork, Grimm, weapons and pretty much anything that wasn't Naruto's dreams. By the time Ruby had a sentence interrupted by a huge yawn for the third time in a minute, Naruto had actually started to relax a bit.

"I'm gonna head back to bed, you gonna be alright?" Ruby mumbled around her yawn, casting a quick glance at the clock.

He nodded, "Yeah. I just need a bit of time to clear my head," he glanced down at his mug, "-and let the sugar rush wear off."

"Pfft, amateur," Ruby scoffed, chugging the remains of her mug and grinning. "I already feel tired again."

She slid quietly off his bed and began flexing her legs, preparing to hop up to her bunk. Before she could, Naruto reached out and gently caught her arm. "Hey, Ruby?" he said quietly, "This… helped. A lot more than sitting here thinking about things would have done. Thanks."

Ruby beamed down at him, "Any time, partner." And then she was gone, using a quick burst of her semblance to disappear back up into her bunk as silently as she had descended.

A stray rose petal drifted down towards Naruto and he batted it away, unfolding his legs and turning to lay back down in bed. The movement irritated the still-bandaged wound across his ribs and Naruto hissed in pain, glaring futilely down at the bandages. This was the third time that the Kyuubi's chakra had failed on him recently, what the hell was that damn fox doing?

The thought hit him like a truck, and Naruto's breath caught in his throat as everything suddenly seemed to fall into place in his mind.

Ever since they had begun, Naruto had noticed some strange tinge about the memories attacking his sleep. He had never been able to actually pin the feeling down though.

Now, armed with a target in mind, Naruto gritted his teeth, closed his eyes and plunged back into the memories; and there it was. Lingering around his mind, already fading fast, was the unmistakable tinge of demonic chakra. It was all that Naruto could do to not burst out swearing and wake the whole room up. He should have known that damn fox was up to something after the initiation!

Taking deep breaths, Naruto calmed himself as best he could as he settled into a lotus position. He then closed his eyes, blocked out the outside world and slowly drifted down into his own mind.

* * *

Naruto's mindscape had changed remarkably little in the years since he had first set foot here. There were some additions, new doors and passages twisting and turning in the maze that was his mind, but as whole it was still very familiar; an overly large caricature of a sewer, encrusted with grime and sludge, filled with dirty ankle deep water, and oddly lacking any of the smell that would normally go along with such surroundings.

The pipes and passages of the mindscape formed an incredibly complex maze, the water-filled passages twisting and turning around and back onto themselves in ways that made the laws of physics curl up in the corner and cry. Naruto navigated the maze with the practised ease of someone literally walking through their own mind, barely paying attention to where he was going until the passage he was in began to widen out. Eventually Naruto came to a large room, dominated on one end by a mighty set of bars.

Naruto had been the Kyuubi's caretaker all his life, and actively conversed with the beast for almost five years now, but the first sight of it still sent a tingle of fear down his spine as he entered the room. The beast lurking behind the bars was so large his brain had trouble comprehending it all at once, its hindquarters disappearing into the shadows of its cell.

Ears longer than many buildings were tall twitched and swivelled to follow him as he entered the room. The demonic personification of rage and anger lazily opened one glowing red eye and grinned, revealing teeth bigger than Naruto was.

"**Well, well, my insignificant little insect of a jailer has deigned to **_**grace**_ **me with his presence."**

The Kyuubi's voice somehow managed to shake the room and Naruto's bones with it's volume, yet at the same time seem to come from directly inside Naruto's head. In one smooth motion the semi-humanoid kitsune rose up to its full, astounding height and fanned its nine tails out behind it, looming threateningly over Naruto. Despite the terrifying visage before him, Naruto refused to be intimidated. The Kyuubi was locked securely behind the bars that were the visual representation of the seal binding it within his body; in here, the ancient beast was as close to powerless as it had ever been.

"Yeah, I did. I'm here, what do you want, damn fox?" Naruto was abruptly aware that in here neither he or the Kyuubi were speaking either Japanese or Valian, something he had never noticed when he only knew one language. It was a rather disconcerting feeling, but he did his best to ignore it.

The Kyuubi snorted, "**And here I thought that you were just trying to ignore it, but you mean to tell me you have not even noticed? You humans get more ignorant every day. Pathetic creatures."**

Naruto fought to stop his frustration bubbling over. When it wasn't frothing itself into an uncontrollable rage, the Kyuubi liked to present itself as equal parts condescending and mysterious. It would lord its superiority over him for a while and be generally infuriating, but eventually it would tell him what it wanted.

"I'm sorry, you'll have to forgive my lesser senses, oh high and mighty furball. I'll have a look around, in the meantime why don't you take a seat, pour yourself a drink and _go fuck yourself?_" he drawled, voice layered with sarcasm and rising into an angry snarl at the end. Even just standing here looking at the beast, Naruto could feel the effects of its chakra acting upon him, eroding his already fragile temper.

Hitting the Kyuubi's pride was always an easy way to get a rise out of the beast. "**INSOLENT LITTLE ANT!" **the beast roared, throwing itself at the bars that separated them. Naruto felt the impact, like a punch straight to the seal etched into his stomach. Despite the force there was little the Kyuubi could do but roar, splutter, and scratch at the bars. Naruto turned away, already raising his hand to mock shield his eyes and sarcastically pretend to look around the room.

That plan was abruptly shattered when he saw it. Sitting right out in the open, where he must _surely_ have walked right past it earlier, was a box. It was a hefty thing, all cast iron and thick rivets, wrapped in and fixed to the floor by a tangle of chains.

Naruto's blood chilled in his veins as he took a step closer. Etched in thick lines on the side of the box was a single kanji; 'Memory'. He had never seen one from the inside before, but Naruto knew enough to tell what this was; a memory suppression seal. A specialised seal designed to take part of his memories, part of his life, and lock it away inside his own mind.

He reached out towards the kanji, but as his hand approached there was a sharp crack and he flinched backwards, hand burning in pain. There came a deep chuckle from behind him, and Naruto span around to see that the fox had abruptly stopped its tantrum and was now watching him intently.

"What. Did. You. Do?" he ground out, marching so close to the bars that he could feel the demon's breath ruffling his hair, and staring it right in the eyes.

"**Nothing,"** the Kyuubi replied, settling its muzzle down atop its paws almost like a normal fox might. Naruto began to protest, but it cut him off, "**I have done nothing, except draw your attention to it. Search the seal, feel for yourself that it is no chakra of mine that binds you. Pathetic as you are, that task is within your reach."**

Doing so revealed that the Kyuubi was telling the truth. The chakra forming the seal was undeniably human, alien enough that he could easily tell it came from a different human, but lacking the tell-tale burning and corrosive nature of demonic chakra. Naruto's hands began to shake as he began to panic, trying to figure out when this could have happened, or what it could mean.

Worst case scenarios began rushing to mind. If some enemy of the village had managed to get so close to him, put something like this on him…

"Who did this? What did they seal? Tell me!" he demanded, turning back to the Kyuubi.

The ground shook as the Kyuubi throw its head back and laughed, "**No,"** it said simply, voice dripping with restrained contempt and mirth.

"Why?" he snapped back, throwing his arms up in the air, "You've thrown these nightmares at me, lured me in here, for what? To gloat?"

There was a long moment of silence as the unusually calm fox stared thoughtfully at him. "**Because, I care about what is inside it."**

"**I could tell you what was hidden, but you would not believe me. I could shatter the seal in an instant, but you would claim the memories tainted and doctored by me if they were not to your liking. No, you will break this seal yourself, and you will know the truth of what you find within."**

Naruto took a step bad and gazed at the Kyuubi cautiously. The relationship between him and the Kyuubi was antagonistic, but also fairly stable for the most part, but it still didn't do to underestimate the beast. It provided him power that made him strong and let him protect that which he cared about, but it also hated him and everything that he stood for. Trapped here in his stomach, the beast had little to do but plot and plan.

Still, suspicious as the Kyuubi's insistence about the seal was, he couldn't ignore it. Even at a normal time something like this would be an incredibly serious matter - Kami knows what a foreign agent could have done to him during the lost time - but right now it was particular bad. Naruto had just spent several weeks unconscious in Konoha's hospital. It was clear when the seal had probably been applied and that was far worse than him being ambushed on a patrol he had been forced to forget all about. That spoke of infiltrators in the heart of Konoha itself.

With a heavy sigh, Naruto began to massage his forehead, "You just love making my life difficult don't you?"

"**It's one of the few pleasures left to me in this wretched place,"** the fox admitted, settling its muzzle back down on its paws and closing its eyes.

Indignation bubbled in Naruto's gut at being so clearly dismissed inside his own mind, but he didn't react. Unless a display of mindless rage was your goal, the Kyuubi never responded to insults or threats. Staying any longer was pointless, and he was starting to get a headache just from being here.

Giving the fox one last annoyed growl, Naruto spun on his heel and silently left the chamber. As he went, one great eye cracked open to watch him go, and a single corner of the fox's muzzle curled into a nasty grin.

* * *

**A/N:**

**A couple of people have asked me about this now, so just putting my answer out here: The pairing for this story is planned, but I'm leaving it unstated for the moment. The romance isn't going to truly develop for quite a while yet, and knowing what it will be for sure would be a bit of a spoiler in some places.  
**

**Plus people guessing is somewhat amusing. ****That it isn't a harem is as close to an answer as you're getting for now.**


	8. Chapter 7: Boiling Point

**A/N: I return! It's been a (long) while since I've posted an update to this and I apologise. Since I last updated this story I've started my first ever full-time job, in the process moving to a different city and having to start fresh, and to be brutally honest life outside my writing had to take priority for a while. Combine that with a massive case of writers block around this segment of the story and you get the hiatus that just happened. Thankfully I'm getting used to my job and settling in, so with luck update speeds should somewhat resemble what they were before the break from now on!**

* * *

Naruto's newly acquired fountain pen skittered across the paper, quickly sketching out a rough amplifying array linking the two larger symbols he had spent the last few minutes sketching out. He had quickly taken a liking to the Valian device after trying it out; it would never produce high quality seals but it was good enough to produce working designs and was a lot faster to use than a brush, which fit Naruto's 'sketch first, think later' creative process perfectly.

Unfortunately, new tools hadn't magically given him the ability to fix the problem that had been driving him crazy the past week. The seal that had been placed on Naruto was a devilishly clever piece of work; it had taken him most of a weekend and the efforts of several shadow clones to even _find_ the tiny seal hidden in a mole behind his ear. It had taken the rest of the weekend to manage to expand the seal and get a look at it, and since then he had made absolutely zero progress.

It was frustrating. Like many of his Uzumaki ancestors Naruto had a natural knack for understanding the cryptic form of language that fūinjutsu used, but this memory seal was nigh incomprehensible. Usually, sketching seal designs and letting his mind drift through them would give him some idea on how to proceed with a project, or trigger a burst of inspiration. In this case, all he was doing was giving himself an alarming number of burned fingers as his poorly designed attempts misfired.

What little he did understand wasn't heartening. The seal was ridiculously well made, and seemed to be specifically hardened against many of the sealbreaking techniques that Jiraiya had taught him on top of that. Despite several days of work Naruto was no closer to finding a way to break the seal. Or, to be more accurate, he was no closer to finding a way to break the seal that _wouldn't_ reduce his mind to mush in the aftermath of the seal rupturing. The side effects of improperly breaking a seal tied directly into the brain like this were uncomfortably similar to the theory behind some of the nastier Yamanaka techniques.

The seal had been knawing at his mind ever since he had found the bloody thing. The idea that somebody had been able to get close enough to him, Konoha's Jinchūriki, to plant a seal like that on him, and do so well enough that he hadn't noticed it until now… The thought of what might be hidden behind it chilled him to the bone. He _needed_ to break the damn thing as soon as possible!

This latest attempt seemed promising though, he could feel it! Naruto clenched his tongue between his teeth and drew the final line to this latest design, moving his pen painstakingly slowly to keep it neat enough to test later. This final connecting line required pinpoint accuracy pinpoint accuracy in order to balance the chakra, but…

"Narutooooooo~"

Naruto started at the sudden sound - and the cold finger suddenly poking into his nose - and then bit back a curse as he looked down at his now wonky line. Scowling, he glanced upward and suddenly found his field of view taken up by excitable redhead. Behind her the classroom came back into focus, and he realised with a jolt that he hadn;t even noticed Port enter the room and begin setting his lesson up.

"You alright?" Ruby chirped, retreating back out of his personal space, "You looked kinda constipated."

Naruto gave an amused snort and flipped Ruby a rude gesture that didn't quite seem to translate, judging by her nonplussed expression. "Just thinking," he deflected, flipping his notebook shut with a grin.

"Ouch, that musta hurt," Yang chimed in with a snigger, leaning forwards to look past Blake and Ruby at him. Apparently the hand gesture that _she_ got in return did translate into Valian, as Ruby let out a scandalised gasp at the sight of it. He was saved from Yang's response by a loud throat clearing from the front of the room, and everyone's attention turned forwards as Port began his lesson.

Despite his best efforts, Naruto's distraction continued right the way through the lesson. Even as the team sat through yet another session of Grimm Studies 101 with Professor Port - or 'Story and Nap time' as Ruby and Yang had dubbed it - his thoughts were filled more with seal designs and vague worries than the subject at hand. Grimm studies was one of the few subjects that Naruto actually paid attention to, but even so he remained distracted throughout the lecture, despite his best efforts otherwise. His notes were messy and half-hearted, bordered with seal designs and scribbles that often took up more of the page than his actual notes.

Eventually, Naruto gave up even pretending to pay attention to Port, his attention drifting off and getting caught up in a 6 point counterseal that seemed to have some potential. In the end he was so absorbed in his thoughts that it took the excited murmuring of almost the entire class to get his attention.

He looked up from his work to find that the subject of all the excitement seemed to be Port, stood before a map of Vale. It was one of the huntsman produced maps, with brightly coloured overlays showing the rough distribution of Grimm. Towards the centre of the map was the blob of grey that represented Vale itself, surrounded by a bright-green 'safe zone' where a trip out into the woods was merely extremely dangerous, rather than suicide. Vale's safe zone was the buffer that kept the ravenous forces of darkness from the average citizen and it took almost an army of huntsmen - supported at times by Vale's actual army - to maintain it.

Viewed on a map like this, the green was perilously thin and fragile looking. It radiated outward from Vale's position on the west coast, stretching as far east as the nearby mountain range, abruptly turning a dark crimson near a spot where the words 'Mountain Glenn' had been neatly crossed out. Things were a bit more even to the north and south, where the green slowly faded down into varying shades of yellow and amber before finally turning red. Even so, the safe zone spread little more than an hours travel from the city at its widest; a thin barrier whose upkeep claimed a steady stream of human lives.

Port was gesturing not far north of the city itself, where a recent revision showed the steadily fading green interrupted by a sinister looking blob of red. He was gesturing widely as he spoke, sweeping his pointer in a line across the land.

"-unusual amount of Beowolves congregating here, here and here!. A force of experience huntsmen - lead by our own Professor Goodwitch and yours truly - will sweep north across the land, rooting out the beasts and driving them out before they can pose a threat to our fair city!" If not for the present tense and the unusual interest of the students around him, Naruto would have thought that Port was in the midst of one of his usual overinflated tales. A quick glance at Ruby revealed that she was staring at Port with wide eyes and practically bouncing in her seat, so Naruto cocked his head and paid attention. The reason for Ruby's excitement soon became obvious as Port continued.

"Several teams have been sent to scout the land, and they have painted a clear picture. The enemy are numerous and, as always, vicious, but only the sheer scale of the threat requires such high numbers. So! In order to take advantage of this rare opportunity to see so many of your more experienced fellows in action, you students will be going out into the field!"

The murmuring from the class reached a crescendo as Port finished with a flourish. Ruby in-particular was vibrating in her seat so hard that Naruto half-feared she might be about to explode. "This is going to be awesome!" she exclaimed, turning to face him with stars in her eyes. Naruto was struck with a sudden bout of nostalgia, remembering the excitement he had felt before his first C class mission. Before he could respond though, she and the rest of the class fell silent as Port forcefully cleared his throat.

"There, there class, settle down," he boomed jovially. "It does my old heart good to hear you students so fired up to get out and into the field, but we mustn't act with undue haste! After all, what truly sets us apart from the beasts we hunt is our brains! Our ability to plan, prepare, and adapt is what truly keeps us alive in the field! And so, I leave you with this task; prepare! Learn the area, study your foe, prepare your tactics and report back to me at our next lesson. This will be a group project, so leaders, rally your teams!"

If nothing else, Port was certainly timely. Almost the moment he stopped speaking, the bell signalling the end of class began to ring. With a last glance at his fledgling seal designs, Naruto snapped his notebook closed and began to pack up his belongings. He was quickly mobbed by a chattering Ruby, gesticulating wildly as they began to leave. He quickly got caught up in her enthusiasm, and the two were so busy chatting that neither of them noticed Blake's worried glance, or the stony frown that had fallen over Yang's face.

* * *

Ruby was practically skipping down the corridor, a jaunty tune humming from her lips.

"Agh, you're so happy I can practically feel myself getting diabetes just looking at you," a voice drawled good-naturedly from behind her, and Ruby neatly pirouetted mid-step to beam backwards at Naruto. The ninja's eyes were framed with dark bags and his uniform askew and messy in a way that might seem deliberate if Ruby hadn't seen him oversleep and throw it on at the last minute, but his eyes were bright and his grin wide. He was moving through the crowded hallway with his usual unconscious grace, flowing around the press of bodies and easily keeping pace with Ruby's excited scampering.

"Well, duh," she chirped, "this is going to be awesome!"

"It'll be nice to get out and about-" Naruto agreed, folding his arms behind his head, "-been getting stuffy in here."

Ruby grinned back in response and the pair carried on walking, falling into a comfortable silence. After a few moments, Ruby's grin faded slightly as she glanced sideways at Naruto, "Hey Naruto," she began carefully, "What was that stuff you were working on earlier?"

He glanced back at her, uncomprehending. "Huh?"

"Back in class, you were writing and drawing a load of things. You looked kinda stressed about whatever it was." The way that Naruto started told Ruby that her hunch had hit onto something, but he quickly wiped his face clean and grinned again.

"Nah, that's nothing to worry about," he claimed. When Ruby opened her mouth to protest, he darted a hand out to start ruffling her hair. She groaned and tried to pull away, but Naruto's hand seemed to be somehow glued to her scalp. "Seriously Ruby, it's nothing. I'm just trying to figure something out."

"Ugh! What is it with you and Yang doing that?" Ruby grumbled, finally managing to escape Naruto's grasp and push his hand away.

He grinned, "You're just the p-"

"Perfect height, I know!" Ruby interrupted, scowling playfully and trying to smooth out her hair. "You and Yang are weirdly similar when you aren't tearing each other's throats out."

"I resent that remark," Naruto responded, looking vaguely offended.

"You resemble it as well," she shot back, blobbing her tongue out and giggling at Naruto's overly dramatic gasp. It took Ruby a few moments to realise just how easily Naruto had changed the subject without her even noticing. "Seriously though. If you need to, y'know, talk about any of that stuff-"

"You're more than willing to disturb my sleep to nag it outta me. Yep, got it." Despite his flippant reply, Naruto's smile was genuine and Ruby accepted it with a grin. "Now cmon, aren't we supposed to be talking about happy things? Like how many Grimm we're going to put the fear of little girls into?"

"So many!" Ruby agreed, bouncing lightly as she walked. "Agh, I can't wait!" she exclaimed, "We're going to kick so much ass!"

"Language," Naruto singsonged.

"Pfft, you're not my dad," Ruby grumbled, "or Yang," she added, glancing over her shoulder as though her sister would suddenly appear. For whatever reason Yang was very enthusiastic about chiding Ruby for using any curse words, which she found slightly hypocritical as practically all the ones Ruby knew, she'd picked up listening to Yang's slipups. Ruby tried to be the bigger person and ignore Naruto's cackling, she really did, but when he added a mimicked whip crack into the mix she just _had_ to aim a kick at his shin, and quickly change the subject while he was hopping and cursing in Japanese.

"Anyways! We're gonna kick so much Grimm behind and it's gonna be awesome and I'll be able to show Weiss how good a leader I really am!" Ruby declared in one long breath, finishing with one hand cocked against her hip and the other pointing forwards dramatically.

She wilted as Naruto began to snicker. "_Hime_ still being a bitch?" he asked. Ruby flushed, and reflexively checked behind her as though Weiss would suddenly materialise and take revenge for the slight against her name.

"L-language!" she shot back.

"I'm older than you, _Chibi__,_" he countered smoothly.

Ruby groaned. Naruto really was distressingly like a male Yang sometimes. If they actually got along, she might have to fear for her sanity. "She's not a bitch, she-"

"If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and sounds like its trying to lay eggs like a duck…" Naruto interrupted her, his grin growing wider and wider as Ruby went redder and redder.

"She's just hard to impress is all!" she finished quickly, deflating slightly and dropping her gaze to the floor. No matter what Ruby did, the white-haired girl was holding on hard to the poor first impression that she had formed. When Ruby looked up again, Naruto's grin had turned into a supportive smile and he tapped his knuckled lightly against her shoulder.

"I'm sure that she'll come around," he reassured her, pausing and looking off into the distance with a contemplative look on his face. Ruby paused as well, waiting for whatever nugget of wisdom Naruto was about to dispense.

"Have you tried punching her in the face? Had good results with that in the past."

Resisting the urge to facepalm, Ruby gave Naruto a confused look. She opened her mouth incredulously, but her response was cut short as a yellow blur shot past them, knocking a cursing Naruto to the side. The pair watched Yang storm down the hallway. She was followed by a harried-looking Blake, who gave them an apologetic glance before hurrying along after her.

Naruto sighed, "Great, just what I needed to brighten up my day," he grumbled.

"I dunno what's up with her," Ruby said, "she seemed like she was in a good mood this morning." Naruto's response was muttered in Japanese and accompanied by a disbelieving snort. Ruby had the distinct impression it was probably a good thing she couldn't understand him judging by his tone. The pair lapsed into an awkward silence as they continued on down the halls and Rubt sighed heavily. Getting accustomed to being a leader was far more difficult than she had been expecting, but Naruto and Yang's feud was the icing on the cake of her difficulties. Eventuall she broke the silence, mouth curling up into a small grin as she glanced at Naruto out of the corner of her eye.

"So, seriously, punch her in the face?" she asked incredulously.

Naruto took a second to respond, before letting out a loud, barking laugh. "You'd be surprised how well it works."

* * *

It should have been simple. Get the team together, get Port's essay done and cruise through the rest of week set in the knowledge that they were all ready to go kick ass that weekend. It should have been easy, but Ruby had forgotten that things tended to complicate themselves, to the point where concepts like 'simple' and 'easy' just jumped out the window, when you put Yang and Naruto in the same room.

"Get off, you're going to break it!"

"I'm going to break your face in a minute, let go!"

Ruby groaned, slumping down in her chair and letting her forehead drop down onto the tabletop with a thunk, narrowly missing her almost untouched lunch. Across the table Naruto and Yang paid her no mind, too caught up in wrestling with and snarling at each other. The two had been snarking and snapping at each other ever since they had gotten back together for lunch, and eventually things had escalated.

A hand touched Ruby's shoulder gently, and she looked up to see Blake's concerned face. "How did this one get started?" the bow-clad girl asked gently, taking the seat besides Ruby and beginning to nibble on a tuna salad.

"I don't even know," she groaned, "Something about Naruto's scroll I think? Then they started arguing and, well-" she finished by waving her arms helplessly at the arguing duo. The two were currently pulling the aforementioned scroll back and forth, and Yang had Naruto in a headlock with her free arm. "I thought they were getting on after their weird shooty-bonding thing." Ruby said quietly, slumping in despair. Blake 'hmm'ed sceptically, watching as Naruto began attempting to stab Yang in the kidneys with a - thankfully blunt - dinner knife.

Ruby grimaced as she followed Blake's eyes, "Getting on _better_?" she tried.

"Better is a subjective word," Blake remarked dryly, casually tilting her head to the side to dodge a piece of sausage sent flying by Naruto's flailing.

"Should we, uh, do something?" Ruby asked.

Blake gave the argument a considering glance, "What should we do? They're at each other's throats constantly, we can't carry on like this."

"No," Ruby hummed in agreement, chewing her lip thoughtfully as she looked at Blake. "All they do with each other is argue! If only they'd actually talk to each other, get to know one another, surely they'd be friends then!?"

Blake's 'hmm' didn't sound convinced, but Ruby was sure she was right. If only she could somehow force Naruto and Yang to actually talk to each other… An idea popped into her head and she turned to Blake, mouth half open, when they were interrupted by a crash from behind.

Unsurprisingly, the fighting blondes hadn't simmered down while Ruby and Blake were talking. By this point Yang's eyes had turned red, and Naruto's knife was coated with a thin layer of what Ruby now recognised as wind chakra. She decided to step in before someone got hurt and Naruto, Yang, and - oddly - Blake all flinched as Ruby leaned across the table and let loose a piercing whistle right into the arguing pair's ears. "Guys cmon," she pleaded.

"He/She started it!" Yang and Naruto both shouted simultaneously, turning to glare at each other again. Ruby groaned and dropped her head back down into the table. The pair would have been am amazing comedy act if she didn't have to deal with them.

"Cmon guys, we need to sort this project out," she said, trying to reason with them.

"Alright, alright, fine," Yang muttered, crossing her arms grumpily.

"Okayyy," Ruby said with a sigh. She shuffled through her papers, looking at exactly what Port wanted them to do. "So, I'll look at what Grimm are in the area, see if we have any surprises to plan for. Blake, can you get everything written up neatly?"

"Probably for the best," Blake said with a small smile, glancing at Ruby's handwriting on the folder. As the dorm room's noticeboard would reveal, Yang wasn't much better, and while Naruto's writing was neat he took ages to write out even small sentences.

"And that leaves… Yang and Naruto. I want you two to work together getting some maps together. Check the area for Grimm nests and good defendable areas, that sorta thing."

The only reason that Ruby even managed to to finish her sentence was because the rest of the table had fallen into a horrified silence. Blake looked ready to break down, and as though she hadn't decided whether to do so in tears or laughter. Yang and Naruto shared identical expressions of horror, rage, and imminent mutiny. She stayed optimistic though. In her mind, her logic was clear and solid; surely if she could get Yang and Naruto to actually _talk_ to each other they'd sort out whatever problems kept them arguing, and they'd surely _have_ to interact while working on a project like that!

"What!?" Naruto protested after a few seconds, getting over his outraged spluttering slightly quicker than Yang. "Y- you want _me_ and _her_ to work together?"

"Yep," Ruby said brightly. "It's a big job for one person, we're going to be covering a lot of ground. You said that ninja do a lot of scouting work so you should be able to handle the maps, and Yang knows the sort of terrain and stuff since she's been in the area on trips with dad. If you work together you should be able to get it done quickly!" She leaned back, beaming at her logic.

"Like hell am I spending an entire afternoon working with this idiot!"

"The feeling's mutual, bimbo!"

Yang and Naruto were snarling now, foreheads pressed together as though they were a pair of bulls. Sure Blake cast Ruby a dubious glance, leaning over to whisper in her ear, "Are you sure this is a good idea?"

"Don't worry," Ruby assured her, "Once they get working and actually talk to each other, things will settle down." Smiling happily, Ruby grabbed an apple from her plate to tuck into and leaned back in her chair. There was no way that this could go wrong.

* * *

If Naruto had been in a better mood, Ruby's expression of complete and utter shock would have been hilarious. As it was, he wasn't in much of a mood to enjoy it. Across the table Yang was glowering at him and he couldn't quite suppress a flash of irritation, returning the gesture with a sour look of his own.

"H-how did this happen!?" Ruby finally shrieked, after almost a minute of horrified silence, "You were meant to be looking through maps, how did you end up like this?" she exclaimed, gesturing at the two of them. Both Yang and Naruto were covered in scrapes, bruises, and ash, their clothing almost torn to shreds. They looked more like they had just finished a titanic battle, not completed a homework exercise.

"Well, if _somebody_ hadn't been waving around goddamned explosives…" Yang growled.

"Well, if _somebody__-_" Naruto parroted, "-hadn't taken the phrase 'Don't worry, fire won't set them off' as a _challenge_ and started flinging aura-fire, or whatever the hell that was, around…"

Ruby dropped her head into her hands in despair. "Did you at least get the maps done?" she asked. Naruto and Yang's sudden silence told her all that she needed to know.

With a defeated sign, Ruby padded over to the white-board she had produced from somewhere and set up in their dorm, "So, shall I start then?"

"Might as well," Blake agreed, glancing up from the book she was reading to look between Naruto and Yang. He nodded, and tried to give Ruby a grin. Ruby tapped a button on her scroll and a map popped up on the whiteboard, a zoomed in version of the one Port had been using earlier. She began gesturing at the map.

"According to Port we're gonna be dropped into the northern part of Forever Fall, and then head north into Evergreen Glades. They're both pretty similar to the Emerald Forest Grimm-wise. Kinda. Forever Fall has some big Ursai but they shouldn't mess with a group as big as ours, and Evergreen Glades has some nasty stuff once it starts snowing but we won't be going that far north-"

"So, pretty much like the initiation then?" Naruto cut in for clarification, running through jutsu in his head.

"I thought you could understand Valian now?" Yang snarked from the side. Naruto's head swivelled towards her with a growl, but before he could say anything Blake cut in.

"Yang!" she snapped. Yang recoiled as though she had been slapped, giving Blake a look of betrayal. For a moment she looked like she was about to turn her tongue on Blake, but at the last second she thought better of it and crossed her arms with a huff, face set in a sulky frown.

"Pretty much, yeah," Ruby said to Naruto, "Probably less giant Nevermore though." Oddly enough, she seemed disappointed at her own news there.

"There was one weird thing though-" Ruby continued, "-all the reports we're going over to investigate mention Beowolves, but pretty much nothing else." That certainly got Blake's attention, and even Yang looked up from her sulking to give an interested 'huh'.

"Is that unusual?" Naruto asked.

"Packs of Beowolves aren't unusual in and of themselves-" Blake said, looking truly interested in the conversation for the first time, "-but Grimm don't tend to make a point of segregating themselves; what draws one species would usually draw them all. It's very unusual to only hear of a single species of Grimm being present in a major incident like this."

"It's not a bad thing though-" Ruby cut in optimistically, "-Beowolves are pretty squishy, and as a team we're pretty well equipped for crowd control."

"Alright, lots of mooks, that doesn't sound too bad. I'll bring some extra explosives," Naruto said, pulling an explosive tag out of his pocket and waving it about.

He could see Blake smirk faintly, watching Ruby and Yang's faces pale slightly as he waved a piece of high explosives around, Yang scooting back in her chair. "That would be good. Your tags could help scatter the packs, scare the elder wolves off," the bookish girl commented.

Ruby cleared her throat. "So, uh, you guys?" she asked, gesturing to Yang and Naruto.

After allowing himself a last bit of enjoyment making eye contact with Yang, and watching her flinch as he waved the tag, Naruto tucked the explosive back into his pocket. "We, uh, we got these," he said, pulling out his scroll and pressing a button. There was a beat of silence, in which nothing happened. Then another. And another. Naruto scowled and tapped his scroll harder, yet nothing happened. Yang started clapping sarcastically as he shook the scroll angrily.

Ruby walked over to Naruto and peered over his shoulder. "That one," she said quietly, pointing to a completely different button. Naruto grumpily jabbed at the button as directed and lo and behold, Ruby's whiteboard screen flickered and changed. The girl gave a groan; the state of the maps that Naruto and Yang had scanned onto his tablet told the story that their sulking silences and bitter barbs didn't.

What work had actually been done was of high quality; Yang had marked down Grimm nests, supply caches, and dug up some information about a town they were due to pass by. Naruto had written down notes about the terrain itself, picking out places for them to defend if things went wrong, figuring out the easiest route through the trees, and such. From there, things went downhill. Even after being scanned, many of the maps were noticeably crinkled and ripped where Ruby had the distinct suspicion they had been fought over. In many places Naruto and Yang had repeatedly corrected or just plain defaced the other's work. One map was half taken up with a written argument about whether a particular dark green patch was a hill or a pond, that eventually cumulated in a rude caricature of Yang's face. Many of the later maps were varying degrees of burnt, or just plain destroyed.

"Well, they're, uh, something," she said diplomatically

"They're a load of crap," Yang snapped acidly, "They'd be better if somebody hadn't blown half of them up."

"Yes, they would," Naruto said meaningfully, narrowing his eyes at Yang. The blonde bristled in response and just like that they were ready to go after one-another again. The little part of Naruto that played the peacemaker had long since been silenced today, beaten into submission by too much time spent in proximity to Yang.

"Sis, Naruto, please! Will you two just talk to each other?!" Ruby begged, "You've been doing this for weeks now! Just arguing and snapping at each other, but never actually _talking_ to each other about whatever has got you so wound up!"

Ruby's gaze swung between them before settling on Naruto, who bristled defensively. "Wh- don't look at me!" he said, "she's the one always picking the fights."

"Hey!" Yang scoffed, "like you don't give as good as you get."

"Yeah, but you _start_ it. That's like verbal self defence or some shit," he protested.

"Oh that is the biggest load of bul-"

"Guys, guys, guys!" Ruby interrupted, flapping her arms about in-between them. "Cmon, talking, not arguing more," she pleaded.

There was a moment of awkward silence while Yang and Naruto both seethed, looking anywhere except each other. Finally, Yang broke the silence, "Well, if he wasn't being such a dick-" she mumbled.

Naruto snorted, leaning forwards in his chair and pointing at Yang, "Fine, you start then! You've had it out for me ever since we first met! What's your deal, what's your problem with me?"

Actually being asked to put it into words seemed to leave Yang floundering. "I- well, I- I don't trust you."

Naruto snickered. "Oh, wow, I feel so informed," he said, gesturing sarcastically, "What next: the sky is blue, Grimm are bad?" He smiled sardonically as Yang began to bristle, half rising from her chair to slam her hands onto the table. The way that Ruby started shrinking in on herself and down into her chair went unnoticed by them both.

"Well, why the hell would I? You aren't like us!" Yang yelled. Her eyes widened when she realised what she had just said sounded like a second too late. Ruby's mouth dropped open in dismay and Blake almost seemed to hiss in displeasure. "No no no no! That wasn't what I meant!" she quickly backpedaled.

"What _did_ you mean then, Yang?" Blake cut in frostily.

"I, argh!" Yang groaned, pulling at her hair, "I meant that you don't want to be here."

"Well yeah, there's generally only so much racism someone can take before they want to leave the room."

"Not like that you ass," she countered, face scrunched up in frustration, "I meant at Beacon, not here, here."

There was a faint pause as Naruto had a flash of where Yang might be going with this, and he didn't like it. He quickly replaced his uncertainty with bluster, snapping, "I'd be perfectly happy here if you weren't such a bit-"

"Guys!" Ruby cut in desperately, and futilely.

"Even if I believed you, I don't care how happy you are!" Yang snapped.

"Guys, please…" Ruby begged, to no response except a moment of resigned eye contact from Blake.

"Me, Ruby, Blake, we're all here because we want to be huntresses, because we want to fight the Grimm," Yang continued, "But you? You're just here because somebody ordered you to be-"

"I-" Naruto tried to interrupt, but Yang raised her voice to a shout and bulldozed through him.

"-and if whoever that is ordered you to leave, you'd be gone in a heartbeat like a good little toy soldier. Go on, tell me that I'm wrong."

Naruto's silence as he glanced down, eyes fixed on his hands, said all that needed to be said. How _could_ he answer that question? He was a ninja, trained for most of his life to protect Konoha. If that duty called him away from here, then of course he would go. How could he not?

"Exactly," Yang said triumphantly, "You have no loyalty to Vale, no loyalty to Beacon, no loyalty to us. How the hell can I trust you to watch my sister's back knowing that?! For all that I know, your orders could be to hurt her!"

"Yang…" Ruby said desperately, staring between them. The silence hung heavy and awkward for almost a minute, until it was abruptly broken. The whole room turned to look at Naruto as he laughed, loud and bitter.

"Absolutely brilliant Yang, you've figured me out! He snapped, and even Yang winced at the venom in his voice. "I was sent all the way across the sea, in plain view, to assassinate a fifteen year old girl. Absolutely, fucking, brilliant." Naruto was getting angry now, too angry. He could feel an actual burning seated low in his belly, mingling with all the anger and indignation of what he had just been accused of. The fox was chuckling in the back of his mind.

Gritting his teeth, he rose sharply from his seat and began to pace behind the table, trying to burn off some of the toxic energy. "I was sent here to _observe__, _you idiot," he snarled, "I'm a ninja, you know what that means, yeah? If I'd been sent here to hurt Ruby then she'd be dead already, and none of you would have ever seen my face!"

Yang flinched like Naruto had just punched her. Her face first paled, and then flushed in anger. "Why you, how dare you-"

"What the hell would I get from hurting Ruby?" he demanded, "What possible reason could Konoha have to hurt one girl, to restart a war we just narrowly avoided?"

"I don't know!" Yang shouted. Her own chair clattered to the floor as she shot to her feet. If not for the table between them, Naruto had the feeling that they would literally be at each other's throats, rather than figuratively. Blake looked like she was on the verge of rising as well, eyes flickering between them and her bed, where Gambol Shroud lay sheathed. Ruby just looked defeated.

"You didn't need much of a reason to start it in the first place," Yang continued accusingly.

"We were trying to defend ourselves!"

"Bullshit! The Exploration Corp guys did _nothing_ and you slaughtered them! I've seen the videos, and they ain't all ninja dying." Yang paused to eye Naruto suspiciously, "For all I know, you could be one'a the psychos that did it, and you're just waiting for your chance to kill more Valians!"

For a moment, Naruto saw red. Literally. He desperately started thinking of the breathing exercises that Sakura had thought up for him, trying to ignore the way his fingernails pressed unusually sharp into the palms of his clenched fists. The Kyuubi _loved_ times like this, when it could use his anger to try and slip some chakra out of the seal. It never amounted to anything, but Naruto was sure that the demon just enjoyed making him angry. "I… just no," he said slowly, with a deliberate, forced calm. "Ignoring for a second how completely fucking wrong you are, I had nothing to do with that. I was unconscious in the hospital after a Beowolf did this to me."

He reached up and tugged his collar down, exposing the top of the scar that still lingered; starting an inch below his throat and crossing diagonally across his chest. Despite knitting him back together, the Kyuubi seemed to enjoy leaving him reminders of his biggest failures.

Yang seemed to be taken off balance, but quickly recovered. "Big deal, you got careless around a mook," she scoffed, "That doesn't change what they did, or make you defending it any better."

"Sweet _Kami_, do I seriously need to defend self-defence?" Naruto snapped.

"What the- how can you call a slaughter like that self defence? Do you know how many people you ninja killed?"

"Pretty damn easily," Naruto countered, "Do _you_ know how many of my people have died to the Grimm?"

"What does that have to do with anything?" Yang asked, anger briefly giving way to confusion. "The Grimm kill people! It sucks, but that's why we're here. What does that have to do with us?"

Naruto was struck by a sudden, horrific realisation. Yang had started shouting again but he didn't even hear her. Just his own, suddenly deafening heartbeat and the even increasing chuckling echoing inside his head.

"You don't even know?" he said quietly, almost inaudible beneath Yang's latest tirade. He should have expected it really, it was exactly what Konoha would have done. The Hidden Leaf valued its image as the 'good' village, and many of its atrocities done in the name of the greater good had been quietly swept under the rug after the fact, the knowledge hidden away from the average citizenry. But still, to think that one of his main antagonists didn't even truly know why she hated him?

His odd sense of serenity quickly turned to blinding rage. "You don't even know?! You _kami_-damned stupid-" he roared, slamming his fist down onto the table. The wood buckled under his fist, and then disintegrated into a cloud of sawdust as the chakra behind the blow discharged. Ruby shrieked and fell backwards in her chair, then a black blur crossed Naruto's vision, and as the dust cleared she was suddenly on the other side of the room, sprawled in a corner with Blake crouched protectively over her. Yang moved forwards but Naruto crossed the room in the blink of an eye. "No!" he barked, grabbing her by her lapels and throwing her back onto her bed before she could react. "You sit down, shut up and listen!"

The world looked like it had dropped into high focus, as though Naruto had just put on a pair of glasses. One glance at the girls' horrified expressions told him all he needed to know. He didn't need to look over at the mirror to know that his eyes were now red and slitted, didn't need to look at his hands to know that the blood trickling down Yang's throat had come from a scratch left by the claws now decorating his fingers. The Kyuubi was full-out laughing in the back of his head, but he couldn't even bring himself to care right now. The anger had fully taken hold, and he barely even noticed as the Kyuubi pumped more and more chakra into him, his rage growing by the second.

It only took Yang a moment to recover and then she was back on her feet, sparks of yellow flickering across her throat as her aura quickly closed the thin wound. She stood between him and Ruby and stared him down, eyes a crimson to match his own. Naruto ignored her and prowled about the room, growling to himself as he tried to put his thoughts into words.

"Two thousand years," he eventually ground out.

"What?" Yang asked.

"Two thousand years," Naruto repeated, "That's how long Hi no Kuni's recorded history goes back; books and libraries and shit."

"What the hell does that have to do with anything?" Yang snapped, fists clenched.

"Two thousand years of recorded history, and not one, single, Grimm!" Naruto shouted, "Then your precious Exploration Corp arrives, and within two weeks the southern peninsula is swarming with Beowolves! Do you get where I'm going with this?"

"Oh… shit," Yang said, wilting back down into the bed. He could see the gears working behind her eyes, understanding suddenly spreading across her face. He was too angry to stop though; with all the demonic chakra the Kyuubi had managed to sneak out in his anger his heartbeat felt like a drum, pushing him onwards.

"Yes, shit-" Naruto growled, "-our southern peninsula _was_ farmland. Most of the villages there didn't even have walls. Their soldiers were farmers with spears and leather armour, who had never fought anything worse than wild boars. How do you think they did against the Grimm?"

Naruto was in full rant now, rolling right over the girls' occasional abortive attempts to speak. "I'll tell you! They didn't! Thousands of civilians, dead. Entire divisions of soldiers, dead! MY TEAM, MY FRIENDS, DEAD! All because you fuckwits couldn't keep your noses or your demons to yourselves. And then you have the nerve to call _us_ monsters when we fight back." He got closer and closer as he went on, until his and Yang's faces were almost touching.

There was a pregnant pause, none of the others daring to break the silence as Naruto finished. Some small piece of sense snuck through the Kyuubi's haze and Naruto was hit by the sudden realisation that if he stayed, he was going to do something he regretted. Snarling, he spun on his heel and made for the door, slamming it shut behind him.

The room was silent and still in the wake of Naruto's departure, the girls barely daring to breath, until Ruby's head dropped down into her hands. "Shit," she summarised eloquently, and for once not even Yang commented on her language.

* * *

**A/N:**

**I'm going to be honest, I'm not entirely happy with this one. I had planned to have more (as in a chapter or two worth) lead-in to this argument, giving SLVR a bit more screentime and looking more at Ruby's troubles adjusting to being a leader with two feuding teammates. Unfortunately while I knew those overarching points, trying to create story segments to display them was a major cause of the writers block I've just had Add in general rustiness, and we end up with this chapter. We'll just have to strike this up to one of the weaknesses of a serial format, writing and releasing everything chronologically. Not my best work. BUT it's **_**out**_**, and that means we're moving forwards and I'm really excited about what's on the horizon. We've got an upcoming segment that I'm really looking forwards to writing, AND that segment will mark the end of the 'intro' section of this story, so that should help me get my spark back. Onwards, to bigger and better things! **

**It's probably worth noting that while getting myself back into things, I've gone through and re-edited the old chapters. As of now I've done the Prologue and Chapters 1 and 2; I'm planning to get the rest done by the time I release chapter 8. For the most part its just minor spelling fixes and wording changes, along with me slightly redoing the first fight scene and a few pieces of dialogue I think were a bit awkward in the last few chapters. The main bit I think old readers should go back and read is the AN at the end of the Prologue, where I've expanded a bit on the AU this story exists in, and in the power levels of the characters. **


End file.
